


Sleepless

by Nny



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Movie Fusion, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-09
Updated: 2011-09-09
Packaged: 2017-10-23 14:10:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 26,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/251170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nny/pseuds/Nny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i> “ - those of you who are just joining us, I’m Dr. Kate Heightmeyer, broadcasting across America from  the top of the Sears Tower in Chicago, and tonight we’re talking about wishes and dreams. We’re speaking to Jinto from Seattle, who has a wish for his Uncle John who, he thinks, is in need of a new wife.”</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Many, many thanks to indy_go and kimberlyfdr for beta, tropes for encouragement, and everyone I showed it to and flailed at over the long ( _long_ ) writing process. This is my first story over 6,000 words, so I needed a lot of cheerleading. Thanks also to sandrainthesun for the frankly _beautiful_ cover.

“This is just - this is punishment for something, isn’t it?”

John braced his hands on the sink, hunching his shoulders and letting his head hang down for a second or two. He’d finally managed to shut off the spraying water from the faucet, but his shirt was soaked through to the skin, prickling goosebumps down his forearms. That had to be the explanation for his hands shaking a little, for the wrench dropping into the sink with a clatter that echoed through the house. Had to explain why his voice didn’t quite manage to hit the wry note he was aiming for, there.

Teyla took a step forward and placed a hand on his arm, her forehead wrinkling as she looked up at him. It was a hell of a lot easier to look out of the kitchen window than meet her eyes, watch the way the gray water lapped listlessly at the wooden deck surrounding his house.

“John?”

There was more to her question than right here, right now. No one ever spoke to him without layers these days, and it was hard not to want a conversation where the other person didn’t know every damn thing that had happened. John blew out a breath, carefully controlled his tone.

“I swear to you, Teyla, I’m coping okay. I’m getting over it, I’m getting better, I’ll even have a social life eventually if people will just _leave_ it for a second, let me get on with it instead of -” he snorted humorlessly as he looked at the pile of business cards that he’d given up on sticking to the refrigerator in the hopes that people would think he’d read them and leave him alone. These days he didn’t even look at them. He picked up the topmost card, lip curling at the weird runic border. “‘Leave Your Problems Behind As You Ascend’. Who the hell takes these people seriously?” John flipped it back onto the pile carelessly. “And I don’t think Chaya Sar is a real name.”

“People mean well.”

“I wish they’d mean well at someone else, is all.”

Teyla nodded, outwardly serene, and took a step backward, which had John groaning faintly and rubbing his eyes.

“Not -” her skin was warm-smooth-familiar under his fingers as his hands closed around her biceps, as he tugged her forward a little so he could bend to rest his forehead against hers. “Not ever _you_ , Teyla, you know that. It’s just - I thought people would be avoiding me, I was kinda expecting it, y’know? Instead I’ve _still_ got people coming out of the woodwork to tell me they’re sorry or recommend a counselor or - Jesus, send me a fucking _bereavement_ card and -”

“And every one is a reminder of what you’ve lost.”

He lifted his head abruptly, dangerously close to being a flinch, but his hands stayed tight around her arms. She always understood where he was coming from; better than he did, most times.

“I don’t _need_ any reminders.”

“I know.” She gently disengaged herself, tactfully turned to get her bag and coat together - for far longer than was needed - so he could have a chance to wipe the back of his hand across his eyes, run a hand through his hair and fake like everything was normal.

She’d always been good at that; he hadn’t met her that long after Maggie’d - hadn’t met her that long ago, but it felt like longer. Just over six months since she’d caught him on a morning run, roped him into helping her move before he’d even learned her name, and already he trusted her more than most of the people he’d known before. Teyla just seemed naturally good at this stuff.

When she turned back around her dark eyes were gentle, her face calm, and there wasn‘t a trace of sympathy about her. He loved her a little for that. She watched his face in silence for a minute before she spoke.

“If you would rather I tell Halling to look elsewhere - ?”

“It’s cool. Jinto can stay here. Seems like I could use some good karma or something. I just -” he looked at her sheepishly, head ducked and palm curled around the back of his neck. “You think you could bring him over here yourself? Halling’ll be all hopped up on his Athosian thing -” her lips tightened a little at that, but their friendship was pretty much based entirely on the understanding that they’d never get into a discussion about religion - “and I don’t think I can play nice if he offers to pray with me right now.” A sudden thought struck him. “Jinto’s not going to -”

“It is only for a month.” Face still solemn but Teyla’s eyes were twinkling now, and his mouth reluctantly eased up a little at the corners. There was a time he’d thought that’d never happen again. She patted him lightly on the back, and he found himself leaning into the touch the barest amount. “I’m sure he will not attempt too strenuously to convert you.”

“Okay, okay. Halling’s got to do this retreat thing to be a Real Boy, he trusts you best to be his Witness, I get it. I can deal.”

It made sense - Halling and Teyla had been friends almost as long as they’d been alive, the way they told it, and the various rites of passage the Athosians went through tended to be a community event. It was just pretty inconvenient that Teyla also happened to be Halling’s primary babysitter, and that somehow John had become the back-up when things didn’t work out as planned.

He was pretty sure it was Jinto’s doing. Something to do with all the games systems.

“You’re a good man, John Sheppard.” The thing with Teyla was, she said stuff like that and it always sounded like she meant it. He let his face relax into a small smile.

Could be this wouldn’t be as bad as he thought.

===

“This is going to be _hideous_.”

Katie smiled serenely and placed another ridiculously over wrapped package onto the pile in Rodney’s arms, probably condemning him to a lifetime of lower back pain and eventual total immobility. He’d complain about it if he weren’t already in the middle of a perfectly good rant.

“I don’t even learn the names of the people I’ve worked with for years, why would you think it _remotely_ possible that I could manage to sort out the unfathomable ties between the overgrown branches of your family tree in _one night_? I’ll just end up mixing up your cousin Irene -”

“Short,” Katie put in helpfully - as she stepped over one of the brightly lit reindeer and onto the path up to the door - “black hair, married to Harold. Threatened to put the dog to sleep if he didn’t end his relationship with the secretary.”

Rodney, in his turn, caught the reindeer with the tip of his shoe and sent it clattering into the bushes that lined the sidewalk. Admonishing glance sent his way or not, it hadn‘t been _entirely_ intentional; it boded less than ideally, though, for the ordeal ahead. He kept that thought to himself, of course - Katie had seemed hurt when he’d referred to it that way.

“Enterprising,” he returned, “but beside the point. I’m going to spend the entire night calling her… I don’t know, Betsy.”

“Married to my brother Tom. They had the most incredible wedding; my parents were talking about it for _months_.”

“Mm,” Rodney said noncommittally, steadily more uncomfortable. He would have thought that the decision that they would get married would be enough for a year or two, without having to deal with the constant talk of weddings. It was beginning to sound as though there would have to be sky-diving or spaceships or something in order to outdo the sheer scope of previous Brown family efforts - all of which, no doubt, he‘d be subjected to pictures of over the next few hours. He held his breath, gladly distracted as Katie uncurled his fingers so she could slot another package underneath them, certain that the whole thing would come crashing down around him. She, of course, blithely continued with her instructions, apparently unaware of the imminent danger.

“He’s a psychology professor and she’s the most competitive person in the world.”

“Excuse me, have you _met_ me?”

Meaningful look. “Yes.”

“Oh, god, this is going to be a disaster.” He’d known from the very first time it’d been mentioned that it would be, had begged Radek with increasingly shameless attempts at bribery to manufacture some sort of emergency that would require his presence in the lab for at least the weekend, possibly even longer. Zelenka had just laughed cruelly, peeled Rodney’s fingers off the lab table and sent him on his way. One of these days Rodney was going to fire him and _mean_ it.

“Love me, love my family.”

“Then I take it back! Never said it. Can we go home, now?”

Katie just giggled, stood on tiptoe to kiss him quickly and efficiently on the cheek, smiling back over her shoulder as she turned to press the doorbell. She looked - for lack of a better word - perfect, cold-flushed and smiling, and he was horribly aware of the way the wind turned him pink-white and patchy, and the havoc it wrought with his hair.

“It’s okay, Rodney, they’ll love you.”

“Yes, yes.” He shifted the pile of packages to one side, in case attempts at handshaking were considered necessary. “Just so long as they _feed_ me.”

===

“Jinto, I swear to god if you don’t go to sleep right this second, vampire zombies are gonna come up there and suck the life out of your chest with their _hands_. I’m not kidding.”

Okay, so most of the sentence was said under his breath as he stalked up the stairs; his ideas about parenting really weren’t so warped as all that, and he was pretty sure that even if the kid didn’t _tell_ her about this, Teyla’d just _know_. John took a deep breath and slid the door to the guest room open, leaning against the door frame and crossing his arms.

“Hey, buddy. Having trouble sleeping?”

The light from the hallway glistened a little too much in Jinto’s eyes, and there was a soft sniffle from the darkness. Crap.

“I miss hearing the wind in the leaves.”

This was the problem with the whole Athosian back to nature, live in the forest deal that Halling had taken to so enthusiastically - they kinda lost touch with reality a little. Teyla was all for it too, in theory, and that would usually have been kind of a strain on their friendship; only John was pretty sure she’d be staying in the city until they managed to get hot running water and an electrical supply for her flat irons.

“You want me to open your window a little? If you listen hard enough, you can hear the waves.”

“I guess.”

He crossed to the window, taking a second to look out across the expanse of water, the twinkling pinpricks of city lights on the shore. He craned his neck up; out here you could almost see stars, almost, but if you let your eyes blur a little the city could pretend at it pretty well.

He paused on the way back long enough to drop his hand and squeeze Jinto’s ankle lightly, reassuring.

“Think you can sleep now?” A head shake. “Or you want a story?”

Jinto blinked up at him, too-long hair falling into his eyes, and bit his lip.

“Teyla says I’m not allowed to let you tell me stories any more.”

“Oh she _did_ , did she? Then I guess there’s pretty much only one more option.” He tossed Jinto’s bathrobe onto the bed, turning to go as he spoke. “You know what a Hail Mary is?”

===

The thing was, of course, that Katie really did look beautiful in this light. It was something he kept reminding himself of, although it was getting steadily less effective at quelling the rising sense of panic. The candles were lit, Christmas lights still burning, Rodney’s stomach was full - after ensuring that no dish had lemon in and that none of the chefs had gone near a citrus fruit in recent history, which Katie’s parents had looked at him a little oddly for - and he had a glass of eggnog and a second helping of pudding on the end table beside him. Everything really ought to be absolutely fine.

Katie’s parents’ house was nothing like the home he’d grown up in; there were family photos jostling for position on virtually every flat surface, a basket of children’s toys - not one of them educational - stuffed haphazardly under a piano that was strewn with simplistic arrangements of Christmas carols and popular songs, even though enough time had passed since the holiday to make it seem almost indecent. It was bad enough that Americans insisted on decorating for Christmas as soon as Hallowe’en decorations had been removed, but to continue celebrating for weeks afterward…

Katie’s parents had decided to take advantage of cheap last minute flights, apparently, spending the holiday in Hawaii, of all places. Now there was the strange overlay of Christmas on the cold grayness of the New Year, and Rodney clearly wasn’t in the holiday spirit. There were too many people, too, everywhere you looked. Looking for an escape, a little earlier, he’d wandered through an out of the way door and found himself in the garage, where he’d been greeted warmly and subjected to a ten minute lecture about the wonders of buying American automobiles by someone who insisted on being called Uncle Milton.

For all that, it really wasn’t turning out to be as complete a nightmare as he‘d predicted. He’d somehow managed not to offend anyone too grievously over dinner and apparently they found his complete inability to remember anyone’s names faintly _endearing_ for whatever reason, and he was actually feeling almost relaxed in spite of the anticipatory squirming of his stomach. In this household there was none of the focused attention of his childhood memories, the silent expectations hand in hand with the more vocal disappointment that came of being one of two children to a couple who had enough unfulfilled ambition to project onto a family of seven. More, even. In this house there were enough siblings, cousins, and second cousins five times removed that there was an air of general and abstract benevolence but no time to celebrate (or berate) each individual.

For the first time in a long while, Rodney relished not being the center of attention, and dug into his pudding industriously. The suddenly intensified sick feeling in his stomach as Katie stood up - looking flushed and sweet and painfully _happy_ , the focus of half a hundred pairs of eyes - was probably just indigestion. Had to be.

“Excuse me?”

The noise level abated not at all, and Rodney felt the sudden and almost irresistible urge to turn to the person next to him and strike up conversation himself, if only to delay the moment a little. Would have, too, if not for the fact that it was Great Aunt Janice; no one should be forced to feign interest in the ins and outs of piles medication and the various side-effects _twice_ in one evening. He hadn’t even managed to be polite about it the first time, but as luck would have it the old boot was deaf as well as incredibly dull and self-absorbed.

“Hello?”

He sank a little lower in his chair, digging determinedly into his dessert.

“My youngest daughter has something to say.” Katie’s mother’s voice rose over the conversation and the room fell into silence around her, like the aural equivalent of a solar eclipse. Katie, beside her, looked like she was reveling in the attention, about as far from Rodney’s attitude as it was possible to get right now. “And you will all listen, and listen well. Am I clear?”

Faint murmur of agreement. Rodney manfully held in a whimper.

“I have an announcement.” Her mother beaming by her side, Katie smiled and blushed prettily and looked over at him. He managed a decent enough approximation of a smile in return. “Rodney and I are engaged!”

Tumultuous noise and back slaps and it was entirely possible that he was going to hyperventilate. When Katie’s hand slid into his Rodney clutched onto it tightly, the fork he was still holding pressed uncomfortably between their fingers.

He wasn’t all that hungry any more, anyway.

===

When John woke up it was to the gentle murmur of voices in the other room and the ceaseless tapping of rain against the windows that took up most of the wall of his living room. For a moment - surreal and hazy, like the mist where rain meets water and it’s impossible to see the difference between lake and sky - his dream blended into reality and he half expected to see Maggie leaning over the back of the couch to wake him gently, soft crooked smile twisting somewhere deep in his chest like they were connected, like even the space between couldn’t separate them completely.

He swore softly, rolled abruptly upright, sitting with his feet firmly placed on the floor and his head in his hands. Moments like this were why he never let himself nap any more, why he had forced himself into being a morning person and why his house was cleaner, his accounts more organized than they’d ever been when Maggie’d been alive. (Moments like this were what alarm clocks were for. Slow awakenings were the worst.)

He blinked himself awake, waited for his heart and stomach to catch up to where his head was, and almost without his noticing the soft murmur in the background resolved itself into words that he could almost understand if you just gave him a minute.

“ - those of you who are just joining us, I’m Dr. Kate Heightmeyer, broadcasting across America from the top of the Sears Tower in Chicago, and tonight we’re talking about wishes and dreams. We’re speaking to Jinto from Seattle, who has a wish for his Uncle John who, he thinks, is in need of a new wife.”

The voice lowered in tone a little, trying for sympathy.

“How long has it been since your aunt died, Jinto?”

“Oh, she wasn’t my aunt.” Weird echo effect; Jinto was obviously listening to the radio as he spoke. John could feel his muscles bunching, suddenly a hell of a lot more awake than he had been. “Uncle John is Teyla’s friend.”

“And who is Teyla?”

“Teyla is none of your goddamned business!” John was on his feet, not even sure quite how he’d got there, and clutching the cordless phone from the coffee table hard enough that he could hear the plastic creaking against his ear. From the kitchen there was a quiet curse - he was betting Halling didn’t know Jinto knew that word - and a clatter as the phone was abruptly hung up. “Who the hell is this?”

“Am I talking to John now?” The woman’s voice was hushed, reverent - she sounded like some kind of flea market psychic and he took a deep breath, carefully relaxed his fingers a little.

“Look, lady -”

“Dr. Kate Heightmeyer, John, on Network America. Do you have a moment to -”

“I’m on the radio?” he asked stupidly, still not entirely awake. Jinto’s head poked around the kitchen door, but disappeared again quickly enough when he caught a look at whatever John’s face was saying right now. “ _Jinto_ -”

“He’s worried about you, John.”

“He’s not worried about me, he’s buying good karma by interfering in something that has -” he raised his voice meaningfully - “ _nothing_ to do with him.” There was silence from the kitchen.

“If we could just talk for a moment -”

John scrubbed a hand through his hair before reaching for the remote and setting the tape to rewind, clicking the TV off.

“I really don’t have anything to say to you.”

“Jinto seems to think you do, John.” Her habit of constantly using his name was really fucking annoying. “He says you haven’t been eating right -”

“Pizza is one of the staple food groups. I don’t want to talk about this. Can we just -”

“Because it’s easier that way, isn’t it?”

“ - what?”

“If you don’t talk about it, you don’t have to let go. And it keeps hurting, which you deserve because you couldn’t save her, could you, John?”

He swallowed, or tried to.

“Where the hell do you get off -”

“Or maybe you didn’t feel like you deserved her in the first place?”

The fabric of the couch was cool against his back, and he wasn’t sure exactly when he’d sat down again; maybe it was when he got punched in the stomach, must have been, his gut wouldn’t stop hurting and he wasn‘t sure he could breathe.

“Maybe,” his voice sounded off and his mouth didn’t seem to want to move right, not tightening up and locking down the way it was supposed to. “Maybe some people just aren’t meant to have that in their lives.”

“And by ‘that’, what do you mean, John? Love? Happiness?”

Okay. Okay.

He let out a long breath, passed a hand over his face.

“Look, lady, you don’t know me. Don’t think that you know me. I’m just going to hang up the phone here, now. Okay?”

“Call me Dr. Kate.”

A laugh at that, humorless and cracked somewhere in the middle.

“Yeah, I don’t think so.”

He pressed the button and let the phone drop onto the cushion beside him, not listening to the gentle murmur of the radio as Dr. Heightmeyer signed off, barely even hearing the clatter as Jinto ran back upstairs to bed.

===

Rodney disentangled his fingers from where Katie had been squeezing them too tightly, twisting the knob with a little more violence than was necessary so that silence fell in the car, infinitely preferable to ‘Dr.’ Heightmeyer’s aggravatingly soothing voice.

“Oh _Rodney_ ,” she breathed, and when he looked away from the highway for a second, caught a glimpse of her face, he saw that her cheeks were wet. It was all he could do to prevent himself from rolling his eyes.

“You know those things are scripted in advance, don’t you?” He could feel her glaring at the side of his face but he ignored it, flipping the turn signal and checking the rear view mirror. “Allows people to care desperately about the life of some poor schmuck on the other side of the country, thus improving their karma after they walked past that homeless guy on the subway without giving him any change, while still giving them that little thrill that no matter how bad their lives might be going at least they don’t have some friend’s kid broadcasting it across the airwaves to homes all over your fine country.” He took their exit, the fading noise of traffic from the highway the only sound for a minute although he was pretty sure she was still glaring. “Face it, Katie, you know it’s the truth. The sensitive manly man thing is a marketing trick.”

“You have no romance in your soul.” Her voice was low and accusing, and Rodney took his eyes off the road to look at her for a second, confused.

“You’re saying that like it’s a surprise.”

“I always hope for better.”

This time he _did_ roll his eyes, impatient with the sentiment - it wasn‘t as though it was the first time he‘d heard it.

“Please. If you’re so sure he’s real, prove it to me. I’m a scientist, I believe in experimentation and results. John, Seattle, by the sound of the phone call he lives on some kind of houseboat thing; work out the zip code for the waterfront and you’ll find him. Prove he exists and I’ll admit that there’s such a thing as romance in the world.”

She huffed quietly and folded her arms.

“I will. I’m a scientist as well, you know.”

He really couldn’t have stopped the snort that slipped out if his life depended on it. Which meant that the brewing argument was going to be a _big_ one.

Rodney made a mental note to unfold the futon when they got home.


	2. Chapter 2

“Go away, go away, go away!”

Rodney paced back and forth, whiteboard marker tapping restlessly against his lips. It was technically redundant since he was working on a legal pad with a ballpoint, yes, but it helped him to think. The train of thought was almost impossible to recapture, equations floating somewhere just out of reach, probably somewhere over behind the phone that was still refusing to cease to exist.

“What?” His headache was pulsing in time with the trills as he picked up the receiver and tried again, tossing the marker in the direction of the couch and pinching the bridge of his nose with a frown. “ _What?_ And if you’re trying to sell me something I _can_ find out where you live, so please consider carefully before speaking.”

“…Dr. Brown?”

“Ha.” Even with the increased annoyance, there was always a little tinge of smug satisfaction at the fact that he was right. Again. “Do I sound like a botanist? You _are_ selling something. Anyone calling this number in any sort of professional capacity would be aware that the ‘K’ refers to a Dr. Katie Brown, and as cruel as my parents were they never quite managed anything that despicable.”

“Excuse me? Look, I guess there’s no chance you could -”

Rodney rolled his eyes at the slow drawling manner of the man’s speech, unconsciously twirling his hand to speed him up, without much success. He gave in and interrupted.

“Justify your presence on my phone line or I’m hanging up. You have ten seconds; normally I’d allow only five, but I’m making allowances for the fact that you speak at the speed of a Southern state marshal in a bad sci-fi show. Be glad you caught me on a good day.”

“I want to talk to Dr Brown, and this was the number I was given. You think you could tell me how to get in touch with her?” The voice on the other end of the phone was starting to sound faintly annoyed now. Rodney was reluctantly impressed; it usually didn’t take _half_ so long.

“Try after five. She doesn’t tend to let me answer the phone when she’s in the house.”

“Wonder why _that_ could be.”

Rodney waved a hand dismissively.

“I don’t have the time to spare making nice with people. I happen to be working on important, ground-breaking scientific theories that could change the world as we know it and you’re wasting my time. Anything else before I hang up and find something marginally less useless to be doing?”

“Who _are_ you?” The edge of annoyance had given way to drawling amusement, and that really ought to be more annoying than it, in fact, was. You couldn’t help but admire the fortitude.

“Dr. Rodney McKay. Katie’s fiancé.” He was almost getting used to saying that. “And really, I ought to be asking _you_ -”

“- fiancé.”

Something about tone of the man’s voice had him swallowing the rest of his sentence. After a second or two of uncomfortable silence he cleared his throat.

“Fiancé, yes. Now would you mind telling me who you are?”

It was the same slow drawl as before when the answer came, but something about it had flattened a little.

“I’m the guy who just got back from the store to find that not only had the mailman left two sackfuls addressed care of Dr. Kate Heightmeyer - which is pretty frustrating, sure, but I can deal with it - but also a hand-delivered note and business card of one Dr. K Brown, who is apparently not only willing to commit stalking across state lines, but is also _engaged_. Excuse me if I’m having a little trouble processing this.”

“…hunh. So you _do_ exist.” Dammit. Katie was unbearable when she was right - at least Zelenka was aggravatingly smug and mocked him when he had the upper hand, which was the proper way to deal with things. Katie’s refusal to gloat always left him off-balance. If you weren‘t going to take bets seriously why make them in the first place? Although this - this seemed to indicate a new trend, if Katie was going all the way out to Seattle just to prove him wrong. Even to Rodney, patron saint of never letting a damned thing go, it seemed a little extreme.

He refused to let that make him uneasy.

“I what?” The man’s voice cut through his train of thought, distracting him.

“You’re that Jack. James.” He snapped his fingers restlessly, trying to recall the name that was just on the tip of his mind. “The one who was on that ridiculous radio show the other week.”

“John Sheppard.”

“Right, John. I’d assumed you were some script writer’s attempt at wish-fulfillment but I should have realized that no struggling artist would be willing to subject themselves to that much fan mail unless they had a wood-burning stove. _Do_ you have a wood-burning stove?”

“Are you for real?”

Rodney hummed agreement, walking through to the kitchen to pour himself a coffee - it was far too early for this sort of conversation. “Very much so. If anyone’s reality is up for debate it really oughtn’t to be mine, Mr. Sensitive Yet Manly. Is that a calculated move on your part? Because I’d like to mock you heartlessly and inform you that ploys such as that never work, only the sheer volume of mail you’ve received makes that argument rather pointless. Keep talking, though. I’m sure I’ll find something to mock you for within a sentence or two.”

"I just - " his - Sheppard’s - voice sounded more weary than anything, and the soft rustle of fabric gave Rodney the impression that he'd slumped back on his couch. "I don't get what I said wrong."

Admittedly, the snort he let slip wasn't the most diplomatic of replies, but -

"You said, on live, nationwide radio - and I quote, here - that 'some people just aren't meant to have that in their lives.' That, in this case, meaning love, happiness, family, all that heart-warming and gushy stuff that men aren't supposed to talk about. And you expected that to be a turn-off?" Rodney shook his head despairingly at the phone. "And I thought I was hopeless with women. Really, Sheppard, thank you. You've given me hope."

"They like that?"

"They'll want to _heal_ you." Sometimes there was a call for unbearable smugness. Possibly slightly more often in the world of Rodney McKay, yes, but this was just too good an opportunity to miss. "You'll be turning down marriage proposals by the carload."

"Including ones from your fiancée."

"Well her taste can't always be this good now, can it?" He snapped it back automatically, faintly surprised that the comment didn’t sting more. A laugh rang in his ear, the man sounding startled into it, and Rodney couldn’t help his mouth quirking up on one side. “You do know you sound like a Muppet when you do that, yes?”

“Y’know, strangely it’s not the first thing most people say to me, no.”

“Well I can guarantee they’re thinking it. I don’t suppose you _are_ covered in obnoxiously colored fur or anything of the sort? It’d make me feel a little better about the fan mail and personal visits from my fiancée.”

“’fraid not, McKay.” Sheppard cleared his throat, and when he spoke again his voice was a little lower, kind of intense. “Speaking of, I don’t suppose you can encourage Dr. Brown to maybe stay at home in future? Flattering as it is -”

“I don’t imagine you’ll be having any more contact, Sheppard. Now that I have proof that you live and breathe and wring the hearts of all available females, she can hold me hostage to the fact that I promised I’d acknowledge that romance exists.” He let out a frustrated breath. “Which I suppose means I’ll have to come up with some ridiculous and time-consuming gesture for Valentine’s Day. Some time next month, isn’t it?”

“Same time every year.” Sheppard was laughing at him again.

“Yes, yes. I have more important things to worry about. Or, in other words, please go away.”

“Well, nice meeting you I guess, Rodney.”

“Strangely, yes.”

He put the receiver down, cutting off another of those unfortunate laughs mid-honk, and stood looking at the phone for a moment or two before turning abruptly and heading into the kitchen to top up the coffee that had cooled in his distraction. His concentration was completely shot now.

When Katie arrived home, he was eating a microwave meal and heckling a second-rate science fiction show on the television, having managed to achieve virtually nothing that day. She smiled and came to sit down, tucking herself under his arm in a position that jammed her pointy elbow right into his side. A moment’s wriggling sorted that out but it was about ten times more difficult to get food to his mouth. One of those little inconveniences that came with being part of a couple, he’d found - like trying to find a comfortable position to sleep in. He still hadn’t quite mastered that one. He and Katie sat in silence for a little while as he cast absently around for something to say, or at least something that wasn’t lacking in subtlety and revolving around secretive trips to Seattle, since he wasn’t entirely sure he’d manage to have that conversation without screwing up somehow - and he couldn’t quite work out how upset he was supposed to be.

“I thought we should -” she twisted to look up at him as he spoke and he fumbled and stopped, tried again. “That is, Valentine’s is coming up, and I thought - I understand it’s supposed to be traditional?”

“You - really?”

Katie really sounded entirely too delighted merely at the suggestion of some sort of Valentine’s celebration, and Rodney blinked twice before focusing on the television screen, which appeared to be showing a poorly timed advertisement for weekend trips to New York.

He’d been thinking more along the lines of taking her out for dinner, but somehow it was really difficult to refuse when she got that big-eyed hopeful expression on her face; it had been exactly the same when he’d said something about wanting to get married and she’d taken it _entirely_ the wrong way, but he’d never managed to actually _tell_ her. (And it wasn’t as though it didn’t make sense, really - he ought to get married eventually, he’d always known that reproduction was his duty for the sake of humanity.)

“Oh. Er. Well, yes, of course. Romantic gesture and whatnot.”

“Oh _Rodney_.” She leaned up to kiss him gently on the corner of his mouth before settling down again, elbow once more pressing uncomfortably against his side. “You’re so sensitive.”

The snort that escaped him was probably too soft for her to have heard. He stared at the television and wondered precisely how soon he could extract himself and get back to work.

===

“Hey, John!”

Jinto’s grinning face, the frantic flapping of a piece of luridly pink paper, completely threw off his swing and John barely bit back a curse as the golf ball sliced sideways and plowed into the waves.

Jinto was actually coming out of his shell a little now. Not a word against Halling; after two weeks of looking after the kid John had a newfound respect for the state of fatherhood and a renewed determination that said state would never count him amongst its numbers. It was good to see the kid acting more like a kid, without constantly holding back and mentally checking against the screwy Athosian moral code before he did anything.

Sometimes, though? He kinda missed the old, _quiet_ Jinto.

“How many times? I’m not listening here.”

He grabbed another ball out of the bucket, set it up on the tee carefully as a way of underlining that, but he wasn’t really in the mood to play. He’d got in touch with the radio station and given Heightmeyer an earful, made sure he wouldn’t be sent any more of the letters, but that hadn’t stopped the three additional mail bags that had already been on their way. Five huge sacks were more than his kitchen would comfortably hold, but Jinto had adopted a couple of them before they could all be thrown away. Now he spent every free moment bugging John about this woman or that who wanted his number, address, vital statistics.

He’d be more worried about Jinto reading the letters, about what the hell some of these women might have to say, if the whole thing weren’t the kid’s fault in the first place.

“Uncle John?”

He ran one gloved hand through his hair, clenching it around the strands and tugging just a little.

“Not _listening_.” Not like he thought that was actually going to work or anything.

He picked the golf ball back up and dropped it back into the bucket, giving up. The glove was shoved carelessly in his back pocket and the club leaned up against the house before he sat down on the deck, resting his arms on his upraised knees, completely ignoring the hopeful expression under a mop of hair in favor of picking loose threads off the sweatband he had around one wrist.

“Uncle John, what’s ‘nailing’?”

“Oh _Christ_.”

He let himself fall backwards, folding one arm across his eyes in the hopes that that would somehow make the world go away. He just - he never saw this sort of thing coming.

This time, though? He really didn’t think it was his fault.

The kitchen door creaked open and hesitant footsteps approached. He kinda wondered if he’d be left alone if he played dead long enough.

“You okay?”

Jinto’s face, when he moved his arm long enough to get a decent look at it, was actually pretty worried.

“You’re not mad at me, right?”

Long breath, and he scrubbed his hand through his hair again, squinting in the wintry sunlight.

“I’m not mad at you, buddy. Just been a long week, is all.” He sat up with a groan. “And I know you think you were doing me a favor, but don’t go giving my address out to any more radio stations, deal?”

“Deal.”

Jinto was quiet as they went back into the house, perching on a stool by the breakfast bar as John turned on the oven and grabbed a pizza out of the freezer.

“I’m only trying to help.”

There was a suspicious tremble in his voice, and John swore under his breath.

“I know you are. It’s just, that‘s not the way these things get done, okay?”

He went over and leaned on the breakfast bar across from where Jinto was sitting, flicking the tail of the model plane still sitting on its newspaper even though it’d dried going on a month ago.

“So how _do_ people do it?”

The smile that curled across his face was entirely self-mocking.

“Tell you the truth, Jinto, I’m not the best at it myself. Couldn’t tell you how I ended up married. All I know is that people’s -” he cleared his throat softly, uncomfortable - “y’know, feelings and things, they’re not always the most reliable. These women who’re writing, they think they know me from twenty seconds on the radio, but they’re only - they’re making up an image of how they want me to be. They don’t know about dirty clothes on the floor of the bathroom, or how I think frozen pizza is okay to eat seven days a week -” he glanced up at the kid’s face, glad to see he was starting to smile - “or how I laugh like a Muppet.”

John’s own smile widened a little at that, turned into a full-on grin.

That was pretty much it for conversation before dinner. Jinto went off to find a dictionary that’d belonged to Maggie and was probably on one of the bookshelves somewhere; John chose not to think about what it was he was probably looking up.

He stayed in the kitchen, watching the way the lights across his little piece of the lake started reflecting in the water below.

Seemed like no time at all before the oven buzzed and he divided the pizza onto plates, cheese trailing across the kitchen counter. He switched on the TV, setting the DVD to play from where Jinto’d fallen asleep the night before. When the phone rang, maybe an hour later, he leaped out of his seat to answer it. Much as he loved the film, there were only so many questions about flux capacitors that one man could take.

“Well, you won’t have to worry about being stalked from this direction come Valentine’s, at least.”

The strident voice was instantly recognizable and John found himself grinning involuntarily, leaning back against the wall of the kitchen in even more of a relaxed pose than he normally adopted, slowing his voice down to match.

“Dr. McKay, I presume?”

“Oh yes, ha ha. Please don’t let me distract you from your finely honed comedy routine, even though I’m now out of money and out of patience with the stupidity of travel agents and airlines who can’t guarantee that their food won’t _kill me_ , and it’s all your fault.”

“You’re the genius here, Rodney. Gonna have to start at the beginning of the story if you expect me to keep up, sorry.”

“You distracted me with your ridiculous phone call, which meant that I wasn’t paying sufficient attention to the timing of my mentioning Valentine’s Day, which resulted in my inadvertently agreeing to take Katie to New York for the weekend.”

“…wow.” John headed over to the fridge and grabbed a beer quickly, cradling the phone in the crook of his neck so he could unscrew it. It’d be something to prevent him snorting laughter into the receiver too often; if there was ever anyone John could believe would kill you with their brain, it’d be Dr. McKay.

“Yes. Precisely. And I’ll find a way to make your life _miserable_ if she decides romance dictates we try to approximate the way we met. If I’m forced to settle for sandwiches instead of a proper meal there will be hell to pay.”

“So how did you two meet?” He tried to make his question innocuous, nothing important, but Rodney still sounded confused when he answered.

“How is that any business of yours, Sheppard?”

“Just - I couldn’t remember how me and Maggie met, is all. I remember the city reflected in the water, but I don’t know what we were doing, what we talked about.” He turned around and leaned his forehead against the wall, the cool plaster easier to look at than the emptiness outside the kitchen window. “Fuck. You know what, McKay, it doesn’t -”

“She wanted whole wheat.” McKay cut across him. “Some weird botanist hippie thing, I don’t know. We’d ordered sandwiches from the same place, working in the same set of labs. She got my BLT on white and I got her lettuce and tomato on whole wheat.” He cleared his throat. “For some reason she seemed to find the way I was berating the sandwich guy amusing or something.”

John felt his mouth tilting up a little at the corners. He was grateful McKay had let it slide, hadn’t tried to say anything to make him feel better. It never worked.

“Well that’s… sweet, I guess?”

“Sweet? It’s entirely banal, but she seemed to think it was the intervention of destiny, fate, voodoo. How are you supposed to argue against something like that?”

"And yet, fiancée."

There was a huff of air at the other end of the phone, but nothing else for a second or two. It didn’t seem like McKay to shut up for _anything_ , and he was just about to ask when the other man spoke again.

"Well she's not entirely stupid, she's far prettier than anyone I'd ever expected to date, and she appears to like me for some reason. It seemed like a good idea at the time."

"And now?" He couldn't help asking.

"We're not friends, Sheppard." The slight uncertainty that had been flirting with the edges of McKay's voice was abruptly gone, leaving him sounding arrogant and faintly amused. "We don't share."

Right. He‘d kinda gotten carried away for a second. When he spoke again his voice was as relaxed and opaque as it ever was.

“Well you just let me know how you’re going to take your revenge, Rodney, okay? I’ve got to get back to my film. The Delorean waits for no man.”

There was a snort.

“You _would_ like that film.”

The hum of the dial tone was kind of a disappointment, although he couldn’t say why.

===

Of course, that was just the beginning.

Rodney called him back the next day with a carefully prepared argument about how exactly the Back to the Future franchise flouted the laws of physics, finally winding down to a halt after a complicated tangent into American men and muscle cars. There was a moment or two of uncomfortable silence before John innocently asked about the TARDIS and braced himself for the resulting babble, a grin on his face.

After that, it was kind of impossible to get rid of him.

(He wasn’t trying that hard.)

-

“I’ve mentioned how important my work is, haven’t I, Sheppard? You dragged me away from my equations for this?”

John looked at the paperwork spread over his own coffee table, the laptop he’d abandoned on the couch, and decisively slid the French door closed behind him.

“You’d rather work than think about Catwoman?”

A sigh from the other end of the phone and John let himself relax against the railing, weak winter sunlight shining in his eyes. He knew defeat when he heard it.

“…you have a fair point.”

-

“Tom Baker. Absolutely and without question Tom Baker, and I’ll tell you why -”

“You’ve got a list.” It wasn’t even a question. John was starting to know the way McKay worked.

“Not only do I have a list, it’s sub-divided into categories.”

“…wow. That’s… organized.” He started mentally composing an argument in favor of David Tennant, just to hear what would be spluttered back at him. It was no fun admitting he agreed.

“And there are footnotes!”

-

“Misunderstood and un-appreciated by many, his most formidable weapon was the power of his brilliant mind. Not just a hero - a superhero.”

“Can’t say I’m surprised.”

“Oh, well, at least he’s not just known for jumping over things. What sort of superpower is that?”

“You’re forgetting, Rodney. My childhood hero was human.”

“Well at least you didn’t say Marty McFly. Things could be worse.”

“You mean you never wanted to be Doc Brown? Not even a little?”

“Sheppard…”

“Come on, he invented the flux capacitor. That was just cool.”

“…I’m actually going to kill you.”

“You’re just grumpy ‘cos you know I’m right.”

“I could make it look like an accident. No one would ever know.”

-

“Do you ever actually leave your house?”

John yawned and scrubbed a hand through his hair.

“You called me, remember. Now you’re complaining because I picked up the phone?”

“Not complaining!” He didn’t sound apologetic. McKay never did. “Not complaining, just… incurably nosy. What do you do?”

“Freelance stuff.” John shrugged, even though he knew he couldn’t be seen. It was always the easiest response. “This and that.”

“You stuff envelopes?”

“…I check math mostly, McKay. Had to find something I could do from home when Maggie got sick.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Standard response. He was kinda surprised to find that it wasn’t that far off true anymore.


	3. Chapter 3

Rodney started talking immediately, probably before Sheppard had even got the phone up to his ear.

“Where the hell are you? Where were you? What could you possibly have in your sad, sad life that is more important than answering phone calls from me?”

It was possible that he was getting slightly hysterical, but it was dark and there was a vacuum cleaner getting way too intimate with the small of his back, and something in there smelled of lemons.

“And,” he continued, before Sheppard could get his ridiculously underachieving tongue around a greeting, “if you even think about mentioning anything to do with Marty McFly I will find a way to chemically castrate you long distance.”

There was silence, for a moment, at the other end of the phone.

“…I guess I should get Uncle John, huh?”

“Oh,” he said, deflating slightly. “Er. Thank you, yes.”

“UNCLE JOHN?”

Rodney winced and pulled the phone away from his ear, shifting his shoulders in the hopes of managing a more comfortable position without dislodging anything that would fall on his head. He really needed to organize in here a little more often. Giving up, he pressed the phone to his ear again, hearing a muffled clatter on the other end.

“-Kay, and he sounds kinda cranky.”

“Kinda cranky, huh?” Sheppard sounded amused, which was frankly irritating. Scientists _quaked_ when he was ‘cranky’, dammit. “Thanks, Jinto.”

“No problem. I’m gonna go find the dictionary again.”

Then John’s voice, warm and amused in his ear, which somehow made up for it. He chose not to examine that reaction.

“Hey, McKay. Do I want to know what you’ve been telling him?”

“Probably not, no. But if he’s old enough to use a dictionary he’s really old enough to find these things out sooner or later. It’s all your fault, in any case.”

“Things seem to be, when I’m talking to you. So you gonna tell me which word I have to persuade him not to use in front of Teyla, or - ?”

“There may have been talk of castration. But I was provoked!”

“Sure,” annoyingly soothing, annoyingly slow, annoyingly _Sheppard_. Rodney was starting to suspect that the more he drawled, the harder he was trying not to laugh, which was rather insulting. “You were provoked. By a twelve year old boy who didn’t get a chance to put a word in.”

“Not by _him_ ,” Rodney hissed, “by _you_. Keep up, Sheppard. I don’t have time or the patience to cater to the intellectually challenged.”

“Hey,” the connection didn’t conceal the laughter leaking in around the edges, “I could’ve been in Mensa.”

“…I’m sorry?”

“Passed the test. Never joined, but -”

Rodney almost lost his grip on the radio he was clutching tightly to his chest, reality refolding itself around him in new and interesting ways. Felt rather like his _stomach_ was folding in new and interesting ways, too.

“ _Mensa?_ ” He started off too loud and ended in a sort of strangled half-whispered squeak. He winced and found himself pointlessly ducking down a little, as though that would make a difference; something close by in the darkness shifted ominously off-kilter with a gentle clatter.

“…What was that?”

“I don’t know. Cleaning products of some sort?” The thing was, now that Rodney had had a little time to calm down, to reconsider, he was beginning to see his situation as somewhat ridiculous. He cleared his throat.

“What the hell are _you_ doing?”

“I’m in the closet,” he replied, with as much dignity as he could muster.

“You’re getting married, so pretty far in, I guess.” It was highly irritating, Rodney decided, how much of the time John spent laughing at him. He was the only one Rodney allowed to get away with that. “You do know that it’s supposed to be a metaphor, right?”

“I am in the closet,” he repeated, in as condescending a tone as he could manage, “because Dr. Kate Heightmeyer is doing some sort of ridiculous retrospective thing. Bid for popularity, no doubt. Turns out that your brief moment of stardom has got some kind of record response from the under-socialized and over-imaginative members of her audience, so they’ve been playing snatches of your conversation every ten minutes or so for the last I don’t know _how_ long.” He elbowed the vacuum cleaner viciously, managing a moment or two of respite. “The majority of which I have spent standing here, in this closet, clutching a radio and cursing your name. I’d have done so in person _sooner_ if you’d actually picked up the phone.”

“We were watching -”

“Don’t say it. Don’t say it, I’ll _kill_ you -”

“-the stars. What we could see of them.”

Oh.

“…you were?”

“Not really the issue, McKay. I’m still not getting why you’re hiding in a closet.”

He breathed out slowly and let himself slump sideways, resting his head against the door. His free hand went up to run through already ridiculously sleep-disordered hair.

“Because Katie has a sixth sense about these things and I do _not_ want her listening. It’s all it would take to get her started again. I’m more used to comparisons in which I come out the infinitely superior, so this is something of an adjustment.” Another sigh. “Did you have to be bright, too? It seems somehow unjust of the universe.”

“If it’s any consolation,” and Sheppard’s tone was quite impressively dry, “you’re the closest thing I have to a relationship right now, despite the efforts of twelve year olds and quacks.”

Rodney snorted. “We’re pathetic.”

“Guess so.”

“At least you’re not in a closet?”

John’s painfully unattractive laugh was cut off abruptly as the closet door was pulled abruptly open, spilling Rodney onto the floor and sending the phone skidding across the kitchen.

“…Rodney?”

“Katie.” He stared up at her from flat on his back on the cold kitchen floor, entirely at a loss for what to say.

“Rodney, why are you in the closet in your bathrobe?”

“I - er - that is actually an excellent question.”

“Rodney,” and her voice was a little slower, her eyes narrowing, “why were you on the _phone_ in the closet in your bathrobe?”

“Look, there’s a perfectly rational explanation for this -”

Her cheeks reddened suddenly, eyes filling with tears.

“God, you’re having an affair, aren’t you?”

And even though Rodney knew it was just about the worst of all possible responses to this situation, he covered his face with his hands and started, helplessly, to laugh.

===

John had tried calling Rodney back a couple times, without response. At least it had distracted him from vacuuming the house for a third time in two days - she didn’t want him to of course, never expected it, but the thing was John could _feel_ her being diplomatic. Could hear every unconscious comparison that she wouldn’t ever make out loud. The weird thing was that Maggie hadn’t ever managed to keep the house clean anyway, and Elizabeth knew that better than anyone. Pretty much all of John’s bonding with her had been over the ravenous dust bunnies under the couch and her sister’s inability in the kitchen. It just - it felt like the only way he could show her that he was coping, and coping was the only way he could get her to smile without it trembling, just the slightest bit.

Her mouth was enough like Maggie’s that that hurt, every time.

She was the only one he didn’t resent for treating him like he’d break. He found himself doing the same thing to her which was insane. Elizabeth was pretty much the toughest person he’d ever met; partner in a PR firm that’d been ridiculously traditional and male-dominated before she’d arrived and clawed her way to the top, fighting twice as hard as her male co-workers to get the rewards she deserved. Maggie’d always been slightly in awe of her and their relationship hadn’t been the easiest, but John remembered how Elizabeth’d looked at the funeral, the way her expression had been rigid like she needed to keep control of that at least while her world fell apart around her.

He knew the feeling.

That was why he’d slaved over a hot stove, putting together pretty much the only thing he knew how to make that didn’t involve at least one frozen ingredient. Somehow, despite the fact that he could pretty much be relied on to screw up when boiling an egg, his fajitas were enough to reduce grown men to tears. Okay, once, and it’d probably been because he liked his food a little spicier than the average bear, but the principle was sound. He didn’t spare on the spices this time either - Jinto generally refused to eat anything but frozen pizza anyway and he was pretty sure Elizabeth could take it. And there was a small and evil part of him, somewhere in the back of his mind, that wanted to see if he could make her current… whatever - who ran his own security firm and was about the size of a bear - cry.

Thing was, when they finally showed up, it wasn’t actually as hideous as he expected it to be. John’d never been great at small talk and Ronon seemed to communicate mostly in grunts, but Elizabeth and Jinto kept the conversation going between them and he found himself contributing lazily every now and again. It was almost enough to make him think maybe he’d been missing out on something. He’d mostly let his friendships slide since… Maggie had always been the social one, forcing him out the door to meet up with all sorts of people even when she got sick, inviting people over when it became obvious that she couldn’t do all the stuff she used to. He’d thought this would be a reminder - and it was, but not in the way he’d thought. It was actually kind of okay.

They talked their way around Jinto’s school and Elizabeth’s job, the kind of films they liked - John had found an unexpected supporter in Ronon when he’d started in on Back to the Future, but he couldn’t help comparing the conversation with one he’d had with McKay a little while ago. Elizabeth could argue, sure, but she was entirely too polite about it. He’d found himself grinning lopsidedly at that thought and had proceeded to rip Elizabeth’s defense of the newer Star Wars films to tiny shreds.

The subject of Maggie didn’t even come up until Jinto was upstairs in bed, Ronon and John sprawled on the couch with a beer apiece, and Elizabeth curled up in the armchair with a mug of coffee; her shoes paired neatly under the coffee table.

“Do you ever think about moving?”

Elizabeth’s hands were wrapped tightly around her mug, almost white knuckled, and that’s how he worked out the question behind the question even before she continued. He’d have worked it out from her voice, though, even if he weren’t looking; people started talking softly around Maggie in the couple of months before she died and never got around to stopping. At the time it’d made him want to shake them, yell in their faces that they couldn’t wake her now, not ever, so what was the fucking _point_?

These days it just made him tired.

“It’s just -” her green eyes flicked up to meet his and then away again. It was a second or two before he worked out she was looking at the photograph he still had on the bookcase. “It’s just so strange coming here. I don’t know how you can -” She visibly swallowed, took a second, and when she spoke again her voice was steady. “I would find it hard.”

John took a long swallow of beer.

It wasn’t that he didn’t have the words. It wasn’t that he couldn’t describe how much this place had meant to them, how happy Maggie had been here. He could have spoken about the moments when he woke up and for a second she could almost be there, about how that almost meant he could live with the second or two later when he remembered, but he couldn‘t, not quite. He could have told her about the way he could picture her perfectly, curled up just where Elizabeth was sitting, and how that made him stop feeling sick when he (just for a second, or two) couldn’t quite remember the way her laugh sounded. About how some days he found himself almost _blaming_ her for the way his life was so much more unstable when he couldn’t just focus on the two of them against the world. He could have said all that to Elizabeth, but he didn’t because it _wasn’t fucking hers_.

“No,” he said, instead.

She leaned forward enough that she could place her hand on his wrist.

“John,” she said, but he didn’t answer, staring dumbly at the hand that was preventing him from taking another swig of his beer, which was just cruel and unusual punishment. He hadn’t needed a drink this bad since the time he’d been picking up broken glass the entire next day and had stopped keeping anything harder than beer in the house. “John, you know if you need to talk -”

“I don’t need to talk.”

“John -”

“Elizabeth.” Ronon’s voice wasn’t as deep as you’d expect, to look at him, but he managed to make everything he said sound like a growl in any case.

“I’m just -” she sighed and nodded once, decisively, setting her mug down and getting to her feet. “If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, I have calls that need to be made.” And then, defiantly, “and my offer’s open if you ever need it, John.”

She retrieved her shoes and slid open one of the glass doors out to the deck, already dialing before the door had closed behind her. For a second or two there was silence in the room as John stared intently at the brown glass of his bottle. Then Ronon’s big hand clapped onto the back of his neck, curving around the nape and scaring the shit out of him. John looked up, startled, and there was a glimpse of white teeth under the man’s mustache.

“You’re okay, Sheppard,” he said, like it was a statement of fact, and squeezed just a little bit, shaking him back and forth.

“Yeah,” said John, barely-there grin and tilt of his bottle, his voice cracking just a hair, “I’m okay.”

Weirdly enough, it helped.

When Elizabeth came back in to collect Ronon they were watching a hockey match, alternately yelling at each other and the TV, a forest of empty bottles on the coffee table.

“I lied,” Ronon said as he got up to go. John raised an inquisitive eyebrow and the other man grinned. “You think hockey is a sport. You’re insane.”

John suddenly pictured Ronon going toe-to-toe with McKay - for someone who was only a voice on the phone, it was weirdly easy to do - and choked on a laugh.

“Sure,” he said, lifting his bottle in a toast. “I’m insane. But I’m okay.” It was strangely easy to believe.

Didn’t help later, though, when he was lying on a bed that was spinning slowly, or maybe the room was moving around him. Either way the bed felt too big, impossibly wide, and he had to rely on muscle memory as he held on tight to the cordless phone, thumb fumbling across the keys; his eyes were blurring.

“Hey, McKay,” and his voice was weirdly slow, strangely thick.

“Have you been drinking?”

“’re you still in the closet?”

A sigh from the other end of the phone. “Yes, then. And no, I’m not, I’m on the futon with a sleeping bag.” There was the high-pitched whisper of nylon, audible even over phone lines, and John’s mind flipped instantly, involuntarily to memories of summer camp, to wondering how much noise it made when Rodney jerked off. His stomach clenched around something that wasn’t exactly a laugh, and he made sure to focus on Rodney’s voice, which was a little bit more snide when he continued. “So why I’m still talking to you, I have no idea.”

“My fault again?”

“It would appear to be a universal constant. I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me why you’re calling so late?”

“Just -” he let out a long breath, didn’t know what he was going to say until his mouth was forming the words. “Just sometimes I get lonely, you know?”

McKay let out a soft breath.

"Strangely? Yes. Yes, I do."

They ended up talking about the hockey. Except it wasn’t so much them talking as it was John listening to Rodney rant about the stupidity of referees, the ridiculous errors in tactics, and the pain of having to watch your team lose to _Americans_ , with the occasional drawled interjection managed when Rodney stopped to draw breath.

When they finally hung up, the sick feeling in John’s stomach had almost entirely gone away. Not enough that he could sleep, but enough that he could think about Maggie, remember her, without mentally listing the contents of his house and choosing the order in which they’d break.

Not much, anyway.

Couple of hours later and staring up at the ceiling had gotten dull, so he'd draped his arm across his eyes. When the phone rang again he fumbled for it with his left hand.

"Yeah?"

"For god's sake, Sheppard, stop being a teenage girl and go to _sleep_."

He grinned up into the darkness.

"Thanks, Rodney," he told the soft buzz of the dial tone.


	4. Chapter 4

_Hazy diffuse light, diffuse sight of dreams. Nothing stays constant; they’re on the couch, in his bed, pressed against the clean white wall beside his front door, they’re naked and clothed and some transient state in between and the eyes that look up, down, across at him are changing color faster than he can keep up with._

 _Stifling and breathless and he shifts restlessly, stuttering thrusts into firm grip/warm mouth/tight heat that isn’t -_ God _\- what he’s used to, isn’t what he knows but is impossibly hotter than he ever could have imagined if he’d ever consciously thought about -_

 _And a mouth against his that’s wide and demanding and curled around and formed from the shape of words in a voice that is the only constant, the only thing he knows of -_

 __F-fuck _, he stutters it, dream-eyes wide, searching for (finding) connection that he didn’t know he was missing until he found it in eyes that change in everything but this look of wry affection-amusement-_

“Fuck!”

John sat up, sheets coiled tightly around his legs and uncomfortable clamminess cooling in his shorts, his breathing uneven, and he ran an unsteady hand through his hair. What the _hell_?

He kept the morning routine deliberately, aggressively normal that day. Stripped the sheets off his bed and hurled them into the laundry basket with a little more force than usual, took a longer shower. Nothing important. It took Jinto three tries to get his attention and he nearly burned the toast.

Once the kid was packed safely off onto the school bus he pulled on his sneakers and headed out for a run, running longer and further and faster than he had in months, running until his legs were burning and he couldn’t think past the thump of his sneakers against the sidewalk, the pounding of his heart. By the time he got back to the house the sky was as gray as the lake, a fine thin rain falling that soaked him right through to the skin. He clattered about the living room, his bedroom in the drained half-light, emptying drawers onto the floor and leaving them where they lay.

He couldn’t take a shower until he stopped the damned dream hammering away at the back of his mind and demanding entrance to his thoughts, couldn’t think about anything else until he’d found what he was looking for.

Thing was, half the numbers were probably in the address book Maggie’d kept faithfully up to date, but he wouldn’t look in there. The thought of it actually made him feel a little sick, made his head ache although that could be the exercise and empty stomach. Too many names that he’d seen most recently in tasteful cards; the last time he’d opened the damned thing had been when he’d been organizing her funeral and the thought made him whirl around and punch the wall hard enough that the pain in his hand scared his headache into remission for a while.

He finally found it in the back of the closet in the spare room along with all the other stuff he hadn’t had time for with the advent of Maggie, stuff he hadn’t looked at in years. Golf clubs and his skateboard, Johnny Cash poster rolled tightly in a dust-covered cardboard tube. The book was stuck in the middle of a haphazard pile of golfing magazines, dull and black and embarrassing in his self-conscious attempts at irony.

It took him a few tries to get what he wanted, numbers no longer valid or married or moved away, the few he remembered trapping him into conversations about where their lives had been and where they were going and he didn’t mention Maggie, not even once.

Fifth phone call.

“Hey, Teer? It’s John. John Sheppard. I was wondering - yeah.”

He pushed a hand through his hair, still soaking wet and plastered to his head, the gentle rattle of words in his ear matching the rain against the window pain, almost as incomprehensible.

“Yeah, I thought - sure. Okay. Yeah, that works.”

It almost didn’t register when she stopped talking.

“Yeah, okay. Eight.”

He tossed the phone onto the bed, already tugging off his soaked T-shirt as he walked to the bathroom, but no matter how hot he ran the shower he couldn’t get warm.

===

“Good morning, Dr. McKay.”

He turned his head to the right, the lab assistant squeaking and hurrying away when he caught a look at his face. Rodney turned back to glaring at the coffeemaker, trying to menace it into producing enough to fill a mug quicker than the current slow dripping that was forming interesting syncopated rhythms with the angry pulsing of his head.

A hand reached past him, pulling an annoyingly jaunty mug off one of the hooks, and he snarled half-heartedly. This was _his_ coffee, dammit, and if anyone tried to take it away from him…

“You look like shit, Rodney.”

“Thank you for that assessment, Radek. Any other staggering intellectual leaps you want to make this morning? The sky is blue? Kavanagh’s an idiot? Stevens’ ridiculous attempts at a working hypothesis for his thesis are more use shredded, since at least then they’d keep the rats warm?”

“Sky is gray.” The little Czech moved much faster than you’d expect of him, far quicker than the sluggish firing of Rodney’s synapses allowed for, and he could only watch in appalled indignation as the coffee pot was filched out from under his nose and carried off across the lab.

“…I hate you.”

“Yes, yes. This is not news.”

“ _Hate_.” Rodney bypassed the spare coffee pot that was resting on the draining board and just stuck his mug - Starbucks and super-sized, and it still took two to get him going in the mornings - directly under the spout. “I hope you die in a bizarre lab accident,” he yelled over his shoulder.

“Is not likely,” Radek called back, typing busily. “Your minions are too carefully selected to make accident believable. I die and you will be arrested for depriving the world of my brilliance.” An ostentatious slurp, and Rodney ground his teeth. “You will make lovely prison bitch, I think.”

It was obviously wisest to wait until he’d had a caffeine injection before taking Radek on, so Rodney went back to the mental litany of _coffee coffee coffee coffee_ which was the soundtrack to most of his mornings. Eventually his cup was full and he set another pot to brewing directly, using one of Simpson’s obnoxiously pink post-its to label it with death threats before heading across to hover over Zelenka’s shoulder and provide a biting commentary. He saw it as part of his role as supervisor.

“You know, you’re not pleasant when you’re like this, McKay.”

Rodney squinted at the top of his fluffy head, bemused.

“I’m _always_ like this.”

Radek spun his chair, pushing his glasses up his nose and squinted at Rodney unattractively.

“This is true. More so than usual, today. Katie is withholding sex again?”

There was a choked snigger from the lab tech in the corner, and Rodney vowed an unexpected and vile revenge just as soon as he could think of one.

“Katie is _not_ withholding sex and I am never drinking with you again, you conniving bastard. For your information we are very _happy_ together and -”

“And yet you are sleeping on futon.” Zelenka smirked at the expression on his face and gestured towards his own cheek. “You have zipper marks.”

Rodney groaned and collapsed onto a handy stool, scrubbing at the marks on his cheek with his fist.

“I hate you.”

“I know.” Zelenka turned back to his computer, getting back to his typing, but something about the set of his shoulders seemed to suggest that he was still listening and Rodney groaned again with a little more pathos, staring soulfully into his mug. There was a sigh, and Radek pushed his fingers back through his hair, as though it needed any encouragement to stick out in all directions. “Yes? Clearly there will be no productive work in lab until you have stopped acting like lovesick teenager and please do not huff at me. I have no time for huffing.”

The coffee was not providing any answers, so Rodney looked at Radek instead, finding that he was being regarded with a certain measure of exasperation, yes, but that he also seemed to have the man’s undivided attention. It was oddly gratifying.

“I just - wedding jitters are traditional, right?”

Radek closed his eyes and bowed his head, pinching the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb.

“For this, Rodney, you are drinking with me again. For this you will be _paying_.” He sighed and sat back in his chair, folding his arms across his chest and regarding Rodney frankly. “You are in love with Katie?”

Rodney choked on the sip of coffee he’d just taken, sputtering for a moment.

“What sort of question is that?”

“A simple one, I think. Do you love her?”

“Er. Yes?” Rodney lifted his chin a little. “Yes. I mean, of course I do.”

Radek regarded him narrowly. “This could use some practice.”

“Well I - making a commitment this important is always going to lead to some level of uncertainty, it’s only common sense. You remember how tense I was before I presented that paper in Munich.”

“I also remember tension was because Dr. Carter was in the audience and had expressed desire to see you shredded by peers.” Radek shrugged. “Wedding jitters are not universal.”

Oh.

The thought had been something of a comfort, the last few days.

“They’re not?” He scowled. “Well who nominated you the resident expert on the subject?”

Radek looked at him steadily. “I always knew I would marry my wife.”

Rodney’s eyes automatically went straight to Radek’s ring finger, which was just as bare as he remembered it being; unobservant he might be but that was kind of a large detail to overlook. He looked up again, saw that Radek had seen where his attention was.

“I didn’t know you were married,” he half-asked, not quite sure what else to say.

The other man shrugged again, his mouth set in a crooked, rueful line.

“Not any more. Science was always my mistress and she did not like to share.”

This was why Rodney tended to avoid talking about feelings, of course. Any conversation on the subject could turn without warning into an emotional minefield and he had ample evidence of the fact that support and empathy and other such things were entirely outside of his area of expertise.

“Oh. Er.” He gestured vaguely, helplessly. “I’m -”

“Don’t.” Radek shook his head sharply, his mouth relaxing into a wry grin, and Rodney let out a silent breath. “Sympathy is not a talent you have, Rodney. We will both pretend you did not put your foot in your mouth and I will spare world your guilty attempts at making up that will end in minor explosions and Simpson weeping in toilets again, yes?”

“Thank you,” he said, with genuine relief, and rather than continue the conversation any further he skirted the desk and opened his laptop, taking another long gulp of coffee that was still really too hot to do that with. It was a little while before he noticed that Radek was staring at him over the top of their screens.

“Rodney -”

It was definitely the coffee that was making him wince like that. Nothing at all to do with the note of concern in the other man’s voice. He made a deliberately casual gesture, not looking up from FreeCell.

“Yes?”

“Be sure.”

This time he _definitely_ huffed, returning his attention to the screen. Some people were always asking the impossible.

===

John had spent most of the evening watching Teer’s left ear.

She was far prettier than he remembered, but something about her pale eyes stretched wide in weirdly dulled enthusiasm just made him want to run or hit something or do anything at all to provoke a reaction. The first course, he’d thought he wanted to take her on a Ferris wheel, show her how the world looked from just far enough away. He remembered feeling that with Maggie, once, and for a second or two there’d been an odd roller coaster sort of feeling in his stomach. Except he realized, once the main course arrived and she started telling him about the meditation classes she’d been taking - again - that it wasn’t so much he wanted to show it to her as he wanted to see her react, to _anything_ , and it wasn’t either of those so much as he’d rather be anywhere else but here.

It didn’t help that he had a running mental commentary in a familiar sarcastic voice that was belittling and snorting dismissively at everything she said. It didn’t help that he’d far rather be on the phone and listening to it. A part of him thought maybe he stayed on the date right through until the end purely so he could describe it to McKay, feign enthusiasm for recycling projects and compost until there was nothing but indignant spluttering from the other end of the phone.

His mother brought him up to be a gentleman, though, so he stayed and he made conversation and he drove her home, walked her right to her front door. And when she smiled at him and said goodnight in that slightly tip-tilted way, voice turning it into enough of a question, it was the easiest thing in the world to lean forward enough that she could stretch up and brush her lips against his cheek. Her mouth was soft and weirdly familiar, her hair brushing silk against his face, and the faint smell of incense reminded him of college and the way things had been so much less complicated, then.

He wasn’t quite enough of an asshole to sleep with her.

It was a close-run thing.

He went with _I’ll call you_ over _I’ll see you_ , since that level of asshole was one he’d never managed to train himself out of, and when the lightning flashed and the thunder rolled loud enough to make it feel like the ground was moving beneath his feet he just tipped his head back and let the rain fall.

Jinto was asleep when he finally got home, freezing cold and dripping all over the doormat. One of Teyla’s friends, Marthe, had been sitting for him, and wouldn’t accept any payment; he figured that was okay when he saw the number of microwave popcorn packets she’d left in the trash. There was only one packet left in the cupboard - which was kind of impressive considering Marthe’s tiny frame - and it was salt. He’d never liked salt. Chucking it in the trash along with the others only caused the faintest of twinges, somewhere deep inside his chest; that was pretty much how he marked the time, marked how he was getting better at this.

When the phone rang in the morning he slapped uselessly at his alarm clock for a second, eventually waking up enough to unearth the receiver from under the clothes he’d worn the night before. It smelt a little like clean rain and a little like ozone, and he grinned as he sat back on the bed and pressed it to his ear.

“Something wrong, McKay? Didn’t figure you for a morning person.”

“I’m sorry, John. Were you expecting a call?”

“Shit, Teyla! It’s good to hear your voice.”

“It is good to hear you also, John Sheppard,” and her weirdly formal speech patterns had his grin widening ridiculously, the happiness bleeding through into his voice to echo the smile he could hear in hers.

“I thought you guys were supposed to be completely out of contact while this retreat thing was going on. Everything’s okay up there, right?”

“We are very well.” Something bleated in the background, and John considered - not for the first time - that he and Teyla had some pretty different evaluation systems. “It is Halling who is being tested, and they are not hard enough that they would deny him news of his son. Things are well with you and Jinto?”

“Sure,” he said, maybe a little too enthusiastically, “we’re getting along great.”

“Great,” she repeated, her tone of voice indicating pretty concisely exactly how far she trusted that statement.

“Yeah.” John shifted backwards onto the bed and lay down, one arm tucked behind his head. “Issues of public humiliation and personal privacy aside.”

“Should I ask what exactly you have done?”

“What is it with you and McKay automatically assigning the blame to me? Last time I checked I still wasn’t king.”

Another farmyard noise obliterated the first part of her answer.

“- before. Should I know him?”

“What?” It was early enough in the morning that the sun was low in the sky, flooding into his bedroom and drawing a warm stripe across his stomach. John stretched lazily, his usual drawl slower than any time except for when he was deliberately annoying Rodney. “Didn’t catch that first part.”

“This McKay you mention. I don’t remember you speaking of him before.”

“Oh, right. He’s my -” he spoke through a yawn - “my stalker’s fiancé. It’s probably best not to ask.”

“It is not a story worth hearing?” He could picture her raised eyebrow exactly.

“No, I just - tell you the truth I have no idea what the hell is going on. It’s - weird. We’re weird.” That was as far as he was willing to commit to in this phone call. Maybe he’d tell her some of the rest when he was talking to her face to serene face, when there was a little more distance and thoughts of the stupid dream he’d had didn’t still make him need cold showers.

Maybe not.

“I suppose you are better qualified to judge,” Teyla said, and the little edge of laughter to her voice made him give in to his own, loud in the peace of the morning.

“Which is your polite way of saying you’re not gonna disagree, right? Thanks for the support there, Teyla.”

“I said no such thing,” and she was laughing now, too, and he felt better than he had in a while.

“I can hear you thinking it. I know you.”

He could hear her smiling again. “You do.”

A sudden sense memory of smooth warm skin under his fingers, her forehead resting against his.

Fuck it.

“I think I’ll need to talk to you when you get back, too.”

“You are alright?”

He didn’t say _I think maybe I’m not so straight as I thought I was_ and he didn’t say _I think maybe I’m going to be okay_.

“I’m alright,” he said instead, and he realised as he said it that it was getting a little more true every day. “I miss you.”

“You only wish to be rid of Jinto. I know you, also.”

“Yeah,” he said. That was why he thought he could tell her. “Yeah, you do.”


	5. Chapter 5

Rodney wasn’t sure when he and Katie had started living together. There hadn’t been anything in the way of decisive movement, nothing he could point to and say ‘ah yes, anniversary’. Not that he would say that about anything, of course, which had been the cause of far more arguments than he’d thought were possible. He hadn’t know that so many anniversaries were required, and would have seriously reconsidered the whole relationship thing if he’d had any idea, beforehand, of what it would entail. Or even, for that matter, that he was getting _into_ one.

It had started out with awkward conversation and even more deplorably awkward sex. Somewhere along the way the sex had become rather less awkward while the conversation had remained stilted at best. It wasn’t that they didn’t get along, because he was reasonably certain that Katie got along with each and every person she met. That was just the kind of person she _was_. It was more that Rodney had never been sure that he had much that could be said to a botanist. He had never been sure that he had much that could be said to _Katie_ , certainly not in the way in which he usually said things, and he’d found himself stumbling over his own tongue every other sentence to make sure he didn’t accidentally upset her. The effort was exhausting.

People seemed to like him _better_ that way, was the thing. Not Radek, but Rodney was almost certain that he lived to be contrary and was really a far bigger bastard than anyone but him seemed to realize. It was one of the things he was fondest of about the man. But - aside from Radek - people responded far better to him when he was around Katie, which somehow made it easier to be around her than not, and somewhere along the way he’d allowed her to convince him that that was love. Why not? It was certainly an improvement on the version his parents had perfected and tormented their children with for years. It became - if not quite comfortable then at least _familiar_ , and familiarity breeds content.

Or something.

Then one day he’d moved a pile of magazines to make space for his laptop on the coffee table, and that had led to the realization that he _had a coffee table_ , and when he’d taken a look around he’d realized that it wasn’t his apartment any more. He was reasonably certain he’d never been the sort of person who owned a fruit bowl.

Art prints had started taking the place of his various awards and plaudits on the wall; the ugly futon he’d had since he was a student was moved into the study - and he must have assisted with that one, judging by the size of Katie, although he couldn’t for the life of him remember doing it - and now there were plants to adjust his pacing around when he got struck by an idea in the middle of the night.

There were candles, too, and every single one of them was lit when he opened the door, arms awkwardly full of files and papers and more files and his travel mug, laptop bag slung over his shoulder and straining his back.

“Damn,” he said quietly, annoyed but not surprised, and kicked the door closed behind him. He headed directly through to the study - where the futon was - to shed his load, instead of dumping the laptop beside the bed as usual.

“Rodney?” Katie’s voice came from the kitchen, where industrious clattering had his shoulders hunching even further.

“Just a second.”

He hunted frantically through the piles of crap on the desk, tossing aside schematics and pages of scribbled equations, a _Batman Beyond_ DVD, and the better part of a long-forgotten power bar, finally unearthing his desk calendar and flipping quickly past the two months he’d lost somewhere. There was no ominous red circle around the date, but since he was just as likely to forget to write in it as to forget to check it, that wasn’t particularly reassuring.

Katie’s smile, when he ducked around the low-flying fern to give her a perfunctory kiss on the cheek, was sweet and familiar, and it was automatic to slide his arms around her waist and hug her gently enough that he wouldn’t crumple her clothing.

“Happy anniversary,” he said hopefully, then mentally swore when she stiffened against him. She stepped back, a small frown creasing her forehead.

“Rodney?”

“Er. Happy birthday?” He took a look at her face. “No? Because I’m fairly certain we’ve already had Christmas…”

“I can’t believe you don’t know when our anniversary is.” She shrugged him off and turned to attack the green thing she had on the chopping board. She was a little flushed, but her voice wasn’t trembling, which was more of a relief than he liked to admit. It was really far easier when she got angry.

“I can’t believe,” he couldn’t help answering, a greater than usual degree of irritation in his voice, “that we can have an argument about that when it _isn’t_ even our anniversary. Surely these sorts of fights are only supposed to happen once a year?”

“They _shouldn’t_ happen at _all_.” She said it softly but intent, her jaw tight, pulling the lettuce apart with far more violence than he’d thought her capable of. He swallowed and took a nervous step back.

“Look,” he said, not quite managing to erase all the irritation from his voice and - as a second thought, since she had a knife out now and was pulverizing tomatoes - raised his hands defensively. “I’m not good at this stuff. I’ve never been good at this stuff, you know that. It’s not as though I’ve made an effort to _hide_ it.”

She stopped chopping, but didn’t turn to face him.

“Well I always hope for better.”

“But I don’t understand _why_. It’s not as though I’ve ever given you any basis for that.” He sighed and said, somewhat helplessly, “I’m _me_. I don’t know how not to be me.”

“No,” she said, and this time her voice _was_ shaking, dammit. “I guess not.”

He wouldn’t apologize. He didn’t apologize unless he was wrong - and getting him to admit that was the hard part, of course - and it really wasn’t his fault she indulged in willing self-deception. It didn’t stop him reaching out to brush his knuckles lightly against her back, an easily-denied gesture when, inevitably, she moved away.

Rodney sighed and turned away from the kitchen, and his fiancée, and the decimated salad. He had power bars in the study.

“Don’t forget the phone,” she said snidely, a little choked, as he walked across the living room. He had already started dialing before the door had closed.

“Hey Rodney,” John said, before he’d even managed a greeting, the use of his first name different but quickly explained, “have you always had two syllables? I mean, no one called you anything else, not even when you were young?”

Off-balance, he started to answer without thinking.

“My sister, of course, used to call me - nothing. Er. No. No one called me anything else, not even when I was young. What sort of inane question is that?”

“See _that_ sounds like a story,” John drawled, at a speed that was becoming less annoying by the day. “Cough it up, McKay.”

“Oh, yes, because that’s an entirely charming way of putting it. Did you learn English from a six-year-old?” He sat down on the futon, sliding back with a soft hiss of nylon until he could stuff the pillow - still dented with the impression of his head - behind the small of his back.

It really wasn’t as uncomfortable as it once had been. Either that or he was starting to get used to it.

===

It was official; John was twelve. He was still getting a kick out of mentally referring to McKay as ‘Meredith’, snorting uncontrollably every single time - which was kind of playing havoc with the racing sim game he was trying to play. After his latest car crashed out of first position in a pretty impressive fireball he gave it up as a bad job, rising from the chair and stretching before heading into the kitchen to grab a glass of water.

The lid was off one of the trash cans in the yard. They didn’t generally have problems with rodents or anything, but once Mrs. Kowalski’s cat - a miserable creature that was constantly terrified of the water that surrounded it - had got stuck in one and John’d get a clawed arm as thanks for going to the trouble of rescuing it. He wandered out the back door, sleep-rumpled hair sticking up on one side and sweatpants riding low; he’d been up once already to make sure Jinto got some breakfast, but he’d had to nap again because the previous night he and McKay had watched Star Wars simultaneously, providing commentary and (in John’s case) light saber noises. For the first half hour, McKay had been lagging by about thirty seconds and had yelled down the phone at John every time he’d spoken along with the dialogue of the film, and then he had insisted they restart and synchronize watches and DVD players; by the time John’d gotten to bed the sun had already been on its way up.

The door clattered shut behind him, hinges creaking, and he made a mental note to get some WD-40 on it. Bending down to replace the lid of the trash can, he saw that it looked like maybe something had been at it already, although they’d been weirdly neat about it. Just something felt off, and he couldn’t stop himself from lifting his head, taking a quick look around before he tightly replaced the lid.

The weird prickling feeling didn’t go away as the day wore on; if anything it intensified. It was probably a steady diet of bad TV that was to blame, along with the fact that what little sleep he’d had had been populated with dreams that he couldn’t quite remember but which left him restless and itchy, convinced that he was missing something without any idea of what. It got bad enough, though, that he shoved his feet into trainers, ran a hand through his hair, and walked down to the bus stop to collect Jinto after school. Just to make sure.

There was a guy on the waterfront taking pictures who gave John a weird sideways look, a little too long, but that was something he’d had before; he’d been offered modeling jobs, too, like he didn’t know what they were really asking. John just glared, shoved his hands in his pockets and shifted his weight from one foot to the other, wishing like hell he’d stopped long enough to grab an actual coat. The world was gray - road, water, sky, clouds hunching up near the horizon like there was going to be another storm pretty soon - and the yellow school bus was an obnoxious intrusion that just made everything seem that little bit more unreal. That little bit more like one of those shitty TV shows.

Which is why it kind of made sense that the only other patch of color was the fall-red hair of the woman who was crossing the road toward him, stranded by passing traffic and looking at him like she - like she knew him, like she _thought_ she knew him, like he had some kind of answer for her.

 _Fuck_ , he thought.

Jinto ran up, sneakers slapping the sidewalk, and John ruffled his hair and subtly directed him to turn in one motion, steering him away from the lady on the road, the guy on the waterfront who suddenly didn’t seem half so harmless, directing him away from the craziness of the world and towards home, where at least there was a crazy he was familiar with. He needed to call McKay.

When he looked back over his shoulder, she was still standing in the middle of the road; she mouthed something at him, like he could hear her, like they were the only two people in the world or something, and he just shook his head and walked away.

It was weird how much better he felt when he had the door closed behind him, Jinto pounding upstairs to do whatever the hell it was he did and the cordless receiver a familiar weight in his hand.

“What? Go away! What?”

The corner of John’s mouth crooked up, same way it always did when McKay answered the phone, regardless of his mood.

“Hey, Rodney.” The shape of his name was getting more familiar in John’s mouth, which was something he just didn’t think about too hard. The number of things John wasn’t thinking about was starting to outnumber the things he _was_ ; Back to the Future had started skipping from overuse.

“Oh,” said Rodney, not sounding nearly as annoyed as he seemed to want to, “it’s you.”

“You were expecting someone else?”

“Actually yes, shockingly. I do on occasion converse with people who aren’t you, you know.”

John snorted. “You try to hide it, but deep down? I’m the wind beneath your wings, McKay.”

“Oh yes,” Rodney answered snidely. “You complete me.”

“…you’ve seen that movie?”

A wordless groan from the other end of the phone sent a wave of heat through John, his hand curling into a fist, short nails biting into the skin of his palm. What the _hell_?

“It’s one of Katie’s favorites. We’ve established that she has no taste. What’s _your_ excuse?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said John, his knuckles white and his shoulders way beyond tense and his voice deliberately, carefully, desperately normal. “Latent homosexuality?”

“…are you short?” Rodney sounded a little weirded out, yeah, but not - he really didn’t need to be reading into it. That way led to disappointment and therapy and - and he was listening to Rodney. That was it. “No seriously, you can tell me. Do you have very small legs? Because from what I can see the rest of you looks normal enough, and I really can’t see any other reason for finding Tom Cruise -”

“What?” His voice cut across Rodney, like a whip crack. “Wait, _what_?”

“What _what_?”

It was like a bucket of cold water had been thrown over him. John breathed in, slowly, carefully, and listened with a strange detachment as the phone receiver gave a strained creak.

“How do you know what I look like?” His voice was perfectly controlled, perfectly cool.

“I hired a private detective.”

McKay’s voice was slow, carefully questioning, like he knew he’d fucked up but didn’t know what it was he’d done wrong, like he had no idea that the world John had been building the past few weeks - the world where he was defined by who he was and who he had, not by what he’d lost - was crumbling around him.

"You hired a private detective on me?"

"I got back from the lab to find that Katie’s disappeared. I assumed -” McKay’s voice, always so completely open, was threaded through with traces of jealousy and hurt - “I thought she’d probably have gone to Seattle, since I’m certainly not shaping up, and for all I know you could be an axe murderer, and… well she _is_ still my fiancée, you know. Nominally, at least. It's not entirely beyond my capacity for human emotion to feel a little concerned for her."

Axe murderer.

"You remember the part where she's the one stalking _me_?"

"She's the size of an undernourished child and has the upper arm strength of an angry rabbit, Sheppard. Forgive me if it's not primarily _your_ virtue I'm concerned with."

"So you got a private investigator to stalk me in place of your girlfriend.” John bit back a bubble of laughter that was threatening, because how the hell else could he react to this? “I’m trying to decide if she should consider that sweet or fucked up."

"Not as uncommon a reaction as you'd think. I named my character in an online role-playing game after a girlfriend of mine and she got a restraining order."

He swallowed, hard. "From this direction, McKay? It's fucked up. For the record."

The phone receiver broke in two when it hit the wall.


	6. Chapter 6

In the end, John just gave up and unplugged the phone. Because who the hell else would be calling him so persistently? Every trill was driving the ice pick behind his eyes that little bit deeper, every call lasting a prime number of rings before it fell silent, or not - not entirely silent. It wasn’t silent because it was just waiting for the next call, a kind of negative echo beating in time with his headache. So he unplugged it, wrapped the cord around it, shoved it in the back of the cupboard in the spare room along with all the other stuff he didn’t need any more, and took Jinto out fishing. The way the boat skimmed over the water was almost like flying; it was an antidote to the way his stomach seemed to be eternally in free fall.

In the end, John called Teer from a pay phone, apologized sheepishly for not phoning her, and arranged a time and a place for his acting debut. He stocked up the cupboards with popcorn for Marthe (all of it buttered), and although she looked at him a little oddly she didn’t question the space clear of dust on the end table, the scar in the white paint on the living room wall.

And it was nice.

It was good, even. John had let Teer choose the restaurant - since this was an apology and all - and it wasn’t somewhere he’d ever been before. ‘Sanctuary’, it was called, which seemed a little pretentious to him. But the place was decorated nicely enough - light and airy and kinda rustic, with an understated hippie look, and although he noted with some level of resignation that there wasn’t anything made of animal on the menu, the food that did come was better than he would have expected.

They talked about everything and nothing in particular, the way that people do on a second date; roles a little more defined, not so much in the way of awkward silences. When her hand, replacing her glass on the table, slid forward a little until her fingers were brushing against his, he hooked his fingers around and underneath hers, smaller and delicate, and their hands fit together in a way that was familiar and uncomplicated.

This time when she leaned up to kiss him at her door he met her halfway, a kiss that tasted coolly of the wine they’d been drinking, and he followed her inside and through to the kitchen to watch her make them coffee. If he’d sat on the sofa and waited he’d have had to think about this. Instead he paced, looked at the pictures and recipes and articles on the message board, found nothing he didn’t expect.

She turned to smile at him in that strangely indulgent, pallid way she had.

“I don’t have anything with caffeine, I’m sorry.”

John nearly bit through his tongue, stepping forward and crowding her against the counter, leaning down to kiss her hard enough that he could forget the way Rodney's voice, his horrified response, had come so easily to mind. Teer opened to him easily, her arms coming up to wind around his neck and his hands resting on her hips, thumbs sliding up beneath her shirt to rest on smooth skin.

She smiled against his mouth, gentling the kiss until there was almost nothing left of it except the weirdly formal and formulaic movements of his lips against hers. He listened to the coffee maker gurgling quietly to itself, listened to the silence in the kitchen that was barely broken by the slick sounds of their mouths, and time stalled again and waited for him to make a move.

He pulled away and cupped her cheek with his hand, and the way she sighed his name never _would_ sound right, but he closed his fingers around her wrist and led her over to the sofa anyway.

And he was okay, he was getting into it, brushing her curls aside so he could press his mouth against her throat and feel her pulse fluttering against his lips, taste the strange chemical flavor of the perfume she’d reapplied in the taxi, nearly choking him. Except then he slid his hand up a little further, fingers moving over silk and her nipple tightening against the brush of his thumb and she let out a high, sharp cry that made him pull away, back off, almost fall off the damned sofa as he struggled to his feet.

“John?”

He shook his head involuntarily at the way his name sounded in her mouth.

“I can’t do this.”

No sound except for the coffee maker still chugging away in the kitchen, and then she sighed and sat up a little, enough that she could hug her knees and stare at him sympathetically in a way that made his back knot up with tension.

“Each man must follow their own path, John,” she said in her quiet way, a reaction that was no reaction at all, and he couldn’t get out of there quickly enough.

Cold air on his cheeks made him feel like he could breathe again.

The thought of it scared him shitless, wouldn’t leave him alone: how easy it would have been to have pressed her back against the sofa and kissed her until they were both breathless with it; to have followed her to her bedroom for sex that would be satisfying and tender and so very, very easy; to have listened to the gentle wheeze of the coffee maker more and more regularly until it was a part of every morning for the rest of his goddamned life.

Even if it wasn’t her it would be someone, someone he wouldn’t have to try for, could just fall back into a pattern he knew with; someone who would forgive him if he slipped too far into the familiar and called her his wife’s name in the darkness. He wasn’t sure when he’d stopped wanting that, wanting everything that came with it, but the prospect of thinking about what had prompted it made the ground feel a little unsteady under his feet.

John glanced at his watch, stuffed his hands in his pockets and started walking.

It was early enough. The bars would still be open.

===

“Go away,” Rodney told the phone from the cocoon he’d made out of all the blankets he owned. The only thing missing was the nylon sleeping bag, still draped over the futon - he was of the opinion that the noises it made would be distracting. Distracting from what exactly he wasn’t sure, since it was dark in his cocoon and it was mostly functioning as a sort of sauna, but the silence had been pleasant. Right up until the phone had started ringing and refused to stop.

Eventually he gave in and stuck his arm out from underneath the blankets, hissing when the air hit his skin - it was a hell of a lot colder than he’d been expecting. He snatched up the receiver and pulled it into his den, taking a deep breath before he answered; he owed Katie an apology and Radek had put up with far more from him than he deserved, so it was probably worth the risk of overenthusiastic telemarketers to answer the phone with relative politeness this once.

“Hello?”

“Hey, buddy.”

John’s voice was slow and molasses-thick, and the internal debate raging between an inane grin and an abrupt hang-up held him still for long enough that he felt obliged to respond.

“I’m your buddy, now?” The sarcastic tone wasn’t quite up to its usual standards but was gathering steam. He might be pleased to hear from the man, but that didn’t excuse how long he’d been sulking. “So the week of enforced silence, that was a sign of affection?”

“Nah. _This_ is the sign of affection.”

Rodney let out a huff, the sense of righteous indignation he’d been carefully cultivating for a moment just like this - in the hopes he’d get to use it - deflating just as easily as that. Damn the man.

“I thought you weren’t talking to me.”

“I wasn’t.”

And it was no more and no less than he’d expected, but it stung just the same, far more than he’d thought it would.

“Ah.”

“Private Investigator, McKay. That‘s pretty fucking big.” John let out a long breath and Rodney pulled the phone away from his ear a little - it was almost as though he could feel it through the phone lines, heating his ear and traveling down the side of his neck, carrying a flush with it.

“Right,” he said, feeling small and ashamed and idiotic, which was something he’d been feeling for far too long now, thank you. “Well I - I would hate to think that - I mean, I think we’ve developed something of a - a friendship, here, and I wanted to -” he rubbed a hand over his face, his voice thready. “I hope you’ll give me the opportunity to earn your trust back, that’s all.”

“That may take a while.”

“…I see.”

“But hey,” and the emotional yo-yo of John’s voice was distracting and confusing and Rodney frowned suspiciously, “I still like you enough to call you on the Batphone.”

“You’ve been drinking again, haven’t you.”

“Yeah,” and the word was oddly drawn out, oddly strained, like John was stretching languidly, and that thought dried Rodney’s mouth out entirely. He had a mental reference point now, pictures of ridiculous bed-hair and scruffy stubble and a lower lip that really ought to be outlawed, and he thought he’d got over this sort of thing in college, damn it. When John spoke again his voice was warm and lazily amused, and Rodney bit back a whimper.

“Drunk, but not impaired, Rodney.”

“Batphone?” He injected it carefully with just the right amount of sarcasm - the fact that he had to clear his throat to get the word out was entirely irrelevant.

“Batphone. I put the regular one in the cupboard and this one’s just. Really red.”

Rodney flailed helplessly, hampered by duvets.

“Seriously, Sheppard, are you making _any_ sense at all? I’m starting to suspect you’ve lost touch with reality entirely.”

“Yeah.” Too quick an agreement, and Rodney held his tongue for a moment to see if there’d be more. “Yeah, maybe. Easier to ignore when I drink.”

“Ignore what?”

A quick soft exhalation.

“’ve been having these - dreams.”

“Oh,” said Rodney, his voice betraying his surprise. “Is this the sort of thing friends talk about, then? I’m not sure I’ve actually _had_ one in a while.”

“Dream?”

“Friend. Except for Radek, of course, but I don’t think he’d permit me to call him that in public and he’s not exactly - this is part of the macho bonding thing?”

“Not so much.”

“So…”

“So.” John’s voice had an edge of something else, now, some emotion that wasn’t so easy to read as his usual repertoire of ‘lazily amused’ or ‘lazily annoyed’. Or angry, of course, but he chose to discount that one; he had no desire to gain familiarity with it. “So I can’t stop thinking about them. About - about you.”

“You dream about me?” Rodney asked stupidly, thrown entirely off balance by the whole conversation.

“I used to fly planes,” John answered, which was no kind of answer at all.

“You dream about me in planes? Because - look, I told you I could never fly straight in Star Wars Academy, right? I mean, I’m not the best flyer, when it comes to it, and if you’re having repeated dreams about me crashing and dying horribly -”

“Rodney.”

He swallowed hard at the sound of his name in that voice and made a small noise that he hoped could be interpreted as an invitation to continue.

“When I was in the Air Force, flying was just -” John let out a long breath and when he spoke again his voice seemed a little firmer, closer to the drawl than a slur. “Flying was everything, okay? And when you have everything in that one place it doesn’t matter what else you wanted that you have to give up for it. ”

“I -” But there weren’t really words that could go around how deeply Rodney knew that so he just nodded, cleared his throat. “Yes.”

“And then -” John’s voice was slowing more than usual, longer gaps between the words. “Things went - wrong. Things went _bad_. And I disobeyed orders and I still couldn’t - I didn’t get there in time. Maybe if I had they wouldn’t have -”

“…John?” The pause had gone on long enough that he was starting to worry, but John started talking again like nothing had happened, like he was telling a story that’d happened to someone else.

“I could keep flying if I went to Antarctica, or I could leave.”

“ _Antarctica?_ ”

“Might’ve taken it, too, just Maggie got sick, and it turns out you can live without everything so long as you’ve got _something_. Turns out you can live without that, too, but - if you don’t have to, if you don’t have a reason _not_ to -”

“I - what?”

“I _dream_ about you, Rodney.”

“Oh,” he said again, brain revving miles a minute but not seeming to get anywhere, unless he - unless - “ _oh_.”

“Yeah.”

“But - but I - but how -” He couldn’t seem to get a complete sentence out, his brain racing in circles.

“You want me to go?” He sounded tense, now, and Rodney shook his head instantly, violently, before he even managed to form the words.

“ _No_. No. I just - I mean, how _can_ you? You don’t know what -”

John cut across him, low and intense.

“I know how you sound when you say my name. I know -” and he swallowed hard enough that Rodney could hear it over phone lines and miles, “I know what I want to -”

"John,” Rodney managed, failing to keep his voice even, “what the hell are you doing?"

His harsh laugh crackled across the phone line. "I have no fucking clue. You going to stop me?"

Rodney sucked in an unsteady breath, his hand dropping to the waistband of his jeans, fingers curling around the button.

"No."

“I think I’m going crazy,” in that same low voice that was tying knots in Rodney’s stomach, releasing a slow-burning heat that coiled lower.

“Because you dream about me?”

“Because I don’t know what you look like but I want to know - want to know how your neck tastes, what kind of sounds you’d make while I was finding out.”

“…fuck.” He breathed it, the heel of his hand - without any conscious input - pressing against himself, the barest of friction.

“Yeah,” and John’s voice sounded just as thready as his own. “Jesus, McKay, the things I’d do to you -”

“- do to me?”

“I wasn’t - wasn’t just wondering about your neck.”

It took a second to sink in. Rodney gave up, surrendered, fumbled the button of his jeans undone. The release of pressure pulled a soft involuntary moan out of him and he could hear John’s breathing hitch in response, and it was possibly the hottest thing he’d ever experienced.

“I - your mouth,” he said, quickly and awkwardly, not wanting to interrupt but unable to shut himself up. “I’ve been thinking about - I don’t know the - the protocol, I don’t know if I’m supposed to think about kissing you or, or stubble rash, I don’t know if that’s what we’d _do_.”

“Fuck,” the fricative skated down Rodney’s nerves, the remaining neural pathways that hadn’t yet been melted by John’s voice and John’s words. “ _Anything_.”

“I’ve never thought about anyone the way I think about you.” Rodney curled his fingers tighter around himself and his breathing sped up with his hand. “I’ve never - you derail _everything_ ,” and his voice was ridiculously unsteady as his hand moved faster but he still managed to sound irritated; there was choked breathless laughter from the other end of the phone, cut off in the middle by a soft vocalization that made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.

“Believe me I know the - I know the feeling.” John’s breath stuttered, catching in the back of his throat, and Rodney caught his own on a gasp.

“Oh god, John, are you -? Tell me it’s not just -”

“Fuck,” John groaned, “ _Rodney_ ,” and just like that he was coming, over himself and his blankets and his still-moving hand, barely aware of what he was babbling.

And then there was silence, but for their unsteady breathing. Rodney was holding tightly enough to the phone that his hand was cramping, and he still hadn’t managed to clear his mind enough for speech before John was speaking, quiet and strangely hard, suddenly sounding sober, into his ear.

“Jesus, Rodney, what the hell color are your eyes, even?”

“I - what?” He frowned, blinked into the darkness a couple of times. “Blue, they’re blue. John, what -”

He was cut off by the buzz of the dial tone, left alone with his blankets and his sticky right hand, the smell of sex strong in the air.


	7. Chapter 7

Long way to fall.

The world was spread out beneath them, lights and the reflection of lights like a night sky beneath their feet, like a freeze frame in the middle of a barrel roll. Only John had been in an F-16, he knew what it was like, and it didn’t have this serenity. You’d need some kind of experimental spacecraft for that, an impossibility of inertial dampeners. He let himself imagine it for a second - the hard seat behind his back designed to prevent a pilot dropping off at the endless repetition of space, the gentle breeze in his face a backwash of recycled air - then grinned to himself. He leaned back in the chair a little more aggressively than necessary just to feel it pick up on his motion and reflect it back, a gentle sway that had Jinto’s fingers tightening a little more on the metal bar.

“You good?”

“I’m good,” Jinto reflected, making an effort to prise his fingers off the bar so he could fold his arms across his chest, feign relaxation, and John’s grin widened a little further as he reached over to quickly ruffle his hair. He still wasn’t sure about the whole fatherhood thing (and the way his goddamned dreams were going lately it wasn’t as though he’d ever have to worry about it) but Jinto was like a fungus. Kinda weird looking, with the strange musty smell of all borderline teenage boys – and, yeah, he was growing on John maybe, a little.

“Cotton candy when we get down, then I’m thinking -” as the boy’s jaw almost audibly creaked around an enormous yawn - “home and bed. Cool?”

“Radical,” Jinto answered fervently, and John winced a little. They were making progress, sure, but the kid still had a ways to go.

The Ferris wheel creaked its way around to their final descent and John fought the urge to pull his feet up onto the seat with him in a futile attempt to make the ride last just that couple of seconds longer, feel the air beneath his feet for as long as he possibly could. It was like freedom, like flying, like evenings spent climbing around his childhood living rooms, bedtime delayed until he finally let his feet touch the ground. It was another in a long line of ways not to think about anything and everything; unlike the rest of the week, this one had pretty much worked for a while.

It had gotten bad enough there that he’d almost considered calling one of the names on the cards that were still piled in a haphazard heap on his kitchen counter. Because this - what had happened - it wasn’t him, and if this was some sort of bereavement hangover he wanted to know it. Not the phone sex thing, not entirely, and not even the gay thing, because that wasn’t completely unprecedented; no one had been more surprised than him when he‘d got married. It was the intimacy of it, the way talking to Rodney made him feel. It didn’t feel like a part of a fucking process, the exhilaration somehow entirely separated from the space he’d put aside for the memories of Maggie.

It was almost scarier that way, though. That he could be so involved after so short a time, that picking up easy ongoing arguments somewhere in the middle in every conversation could feel a little bit like coming home - to someone he’d never even met. Someone who’d already screwed him over once, could do it again. Would do it again. Jesus, the guy was going to get married.

John waited as Jinto clambered out of the car, then stepped out himself onto solid ground - reality - letting out a long breath before he grinned lopsidedly and directed the kid towards the food carts.

Blue cotton candy was eventually settled on, which John was fully in favor of. Kids were supposed to eat food that wasn’t a color found in nature, it was pretty much one of their reasons for existing. Jinto was still eating the last bit of it when they got back to the house, which led to a reminder about thorough tooth-brushing from John that made him feel about fifty years old and like his own father. It was uncomfortable, that feeling, so he switched on the TV for a Ren and Stimpy soundtrack as he checked through the mail, looked into maybe getting some kind of real food.

The noises upstairs faded into silence and it still felt weird, after a week or so, not to have the phone held up to his face at this hour. This had always been the hardest part of the day, too tired for pretending, too tired for conversation, even, but lately it had somehow become easier to wander around and switch off lights when there was comfortable and threadbare conversation pressed firmly against his ear. When the pauses between words became longer and the gentle rattle of Rodney’s keyboard rewrote the distance along phone lines until it was almost like he wasn’t alone when he fell asleep.

He hadn’t been sleeping so well the past couple of weeks.

Electricity bills and a leaflet promising some salvation or other were tossed onto the coffee table. They didn’t do much to prepare him for the contents of the plain, official looking envelope, for the way his heart dropped into his stomach and set up camp there.

“What the hell,” he said, after the buzzing of the ring tone, after Rodney’s tentative greeting, “are you doing, McKay?”

“Me? What the hell am I - what the hell are you doing? I’m just sitting here!”

John looked down at the paperwork in his hand, a muscle in his jaw twitching as his teeth tightened against each other. To have gotten here so quickly he must’ve sent it the day after - day after they last spoke.

“Right,” he answered, the effort of control clear in his voice. “Right, and someone else sent me this ticket.”

“…Ah.”

“You’re damned right, ‘ah’. What is this, you’re trying to buy me, now?”

“What? No!” The outrage in his tone would’ve been hard to fake, but John wasn’t going to be quick in trusting it. “No, I - there should be two tickets in there, not just one. If I was trying to bring you out here for - for sex -” Rodney’s voice lowered to a whisper on the word and there was something incredibly annoying about how that made him feel - “would I really be paying for a chaperone?”

The tickets dropped onto the couch beside him and he ran his hand through his hair, resting it against the back of his neck and letting his head drop forward. He closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to see them.

“So I’m saying again, what the hell are you doing? Double date for your romantic Valentine’s weekend?”

“Ah,” Rodney said again, different intonation this time. For someone who talked so much it was weird how much he could say with a single word.

“Ah?”

“Those are our tickets, see. I mean, there is no ‘us’ to have them. So, so there wouldn’t be any awkwardness or anything and you should go and take - and take Teer, was it? She’d probably enjoy it.” His voice was high and fast and a little brittle and it was driving him crazy that he didn’t know which part of the conversation was causing that.

“So you and Katie are -”

“No longer Katie and I, yes.”

“And what am I supposed to do with that information?”

“Look, I don’t know, okay? I don’t know. I just -” Rodney's voice was smaller than John'd ever heard it, low and somehow lost. "I just - think about you."

John's throat tightened like there was a fist around it.

"Yeah," he managed, his voice husky and cracked somewhere around the edges.

Carefully, deliberately, he put the phone down.

 

===

 

Rodney had always been something of a fan of breakfast dates.

He wasn’t so much an early riser as he was nocturnal, and there was somehow nothing as satisfying as a full breakfast as the last meal of the day. That was unless inspiration struck, of course, in which case it was the coffee which had his everlasting devotion. And then there was the fact that at this early hour of the morning he was frequently just getting into his stride when others were still blinking sleep out of their eyes; it was always good to hold some kind of advantage in a social situation.

He’d been off his stride for days now and he was hunched over a mug of coffee at least the size of his head, breathing in the steam like it was necessary for his survival. He was completely unprepared when he heard his name said uncertainly, and he scrambled to his feet with his coffee mug still clasped in his hands. There was an awkward moment as he leaned in to kiss her cheek and she held out a polite hand, but somehow they negotiated the greetings without any lasting injury and he gestured her to take the seat opposite his, smiling tightly.

Somehow the winter sunlight which seemed to drain color out of the rest of the world suited Katie’s coloring perfectly, leaving him awkwardly conscious of the egg yolk on the sleeve of his shirt and the dark circles under his eyes.

“I - er - you’re doing well, I take it?”

“It’s been a long time since you’ve remembered to ask me that, Rodney.”

He winced and ducked his head a little.

“I realize that. I told you I’m not -”

“Not good at this stuff, I know.” She signaled the waitress and ordered a cup of coffee before looking at him again. “So I wonder why you asked me here. I would have thought -” and yes, there was still hurt threaded through her tone of voice, and he winced again - “that you’d take the opportunity to be done with this.”

“Well I figured I owed you a coffee at least,” he said with an awkward smile, dropping it when she just raised her eyebrows at him. “Alright. I just -” he leaned forward, lowering his voice. “I wanted to ask you something.”

She looked around quickly and mirrored his movement, speaking just above a whisper.

“No, Rodney, it wasn’t the sex.” Her cheeks were pink, and Rodney’s mouth dropped open. “That was fine. Good, even.”

“Oh come on!” She flinched back at the volume of his voice and he looked around to find all the eyes in the place fixed firmly on him. “What?” Lowering his voice again he leaned back towards Katie, arms folded defensively on the tabletop in front of him. “That wasn’t what I was going to ask.”

“It wasn’t?”

“No!”

“So, what - ?”

“I just - I wanted to know why you went to Seattle.”

Her eyes flicked up to meet his, then shifted away again.

“The first time or the second?”

“The first.”

“Oh.” The color was back in her cheeks, deeper this time, and she sat back in her chair. The waitress showed up just then with her coffee, and she bit her lip through the few moments of silence before wrapping her pale hands around the mug, not looking him in the eye. “I suppose I wanted a little romance in my life.”

Rodney snorted involuntarily.

“From John?”

She glared. “Well I certainly wasn’t getting it from you.”

“Well I have a lot of work on my plate, you know, groundbreaking stuff - and it’s not like I can just -” his eyes slid back to her face and he sighed, nodded. “No,” he said, chastened. “I know.”

“It wasn’t all your fault.”

Rodney blinked at her, startled.

“Really? It wasn’t?”

She shrugged delicate shoulders, staring down into her coffee.

“I was expecting you to be what I wanted, not who you are.” Katie lifted her eyes to his and smiled a little mischievously. “Kind of an ass.”

“Hey!” But they were both laughing a little, and he curled his hand over hers on the table and squeezed it lightly. It hadn’t ever been hard to convince himself he loved her. “You were always too good for me anyway. I – there were flaws that I – you deserve better.”

Her smile wobbled, then widened, and she squeezed lightly back.

“Oh, and you can -” he disentangled his hand awkwardly and gestured - “keep the ring, and whatnot. Sell it to buy some of those -” another hand wave - “leukemia ferns.” He scowled as her eyes widened in surprise. “Sometimes I listened!”

“It’s one of the most aggravating things about you.” But he was almost - reasonably - certain that she was joking and he quirked her a lopsided, scowling smile.

“Well,” he said, clapping palms to the table and making ready to get up, “that was just about as awkward as expected, so I’ll be -”

“Rodney.”

Her slim fingers rested lightly on his wrist and he looked over at her quizzically.

“Yes?”

“Don’t you want to know why I went the second time?”

“Oh.” He deflated slightly, leaning back into his chair, and rubbed a hand over his chin. “I assumed - variations on a theme?”

“You didn’t come home.”

“…what?”

Rodney was an educated man, a genius, and it was just disconcerting how many times over the past couple of months he’d been completely discombobulated by a turn in the conversation.

“You didn’t come home from the lab, so I assumed I’d find you there.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Rodney scrubbed a hand through his hair, standing it on end, attempting to bully his brain cells into working through physical violence since nothing else seemed to be working. “You thought - we’d had a breakthrough! I was - you can ask Radek, I was there the whole time -”

“I realize that. Rodney.” She reached out and trapped one of his frantically gesturing hands against the table top so that he was forced to just stare at her blankly, unsure how to articulate in any other way. “It just wouldn’t have surprised me.”

“I -”

“You’ve been happier for the past month or so than you have been the entire time I’ve known you. You thought I wouldn’t notice?”

“Well I don’t think I noticed.” Except that wasn’t - quite - “I don’t think I admitted -”

“And now you have.” Katie smiled and stood, re-buttoning her coat before bending down to press cool lips against his cheek. “Now what are you going to do about it?”

Rodney stuffed a hand into his pocket and threw some money onto the table, almost tripping over a small child as he jogged over to catch her by the door.

“Katie.” He touched her elbow lightly and she turned to face him, to smile as he softly said “thank you.” And then he shifted his weight and leaned in slightly closer.

“Really, though? The sex was good?”

For such a small person, she packed quite a punch.


	8. Chapter 8

The lights flickered again and Rodney twitched, looking up from his screen to find the lab quiet and empty and Radek with his hand on the light switch, glaring over at him.

“You were doing that on -” Rodney’s face darkened, the gritting of his teeth sending a sharp pain through his head. “Why the hell would you do that? Some of us have important work to do. If you want to play games, go back to whichever kindergarten you got your doctorate from.”

Zelenka folded his arms across his chest, looking unperturbed. Admittedly it hadn’t been one of Rodney’s _better_ insults, but he hadn’t been sleeping so well.

“It is late. Everyone else has gone home, Rodney. You should go, too.” He held up a finger as Rodney’s mouth opened in automatic protest, continuing before he could speak. “It is statistical improbability you will beat Brooks’ minesweeper score.” Radek wiggled his fingers, a slight smile on his face. “She is very fast and you have not been sleeping, I think.”

“I’ve been sleeping just fine.” He bristled.

“Ah, so problems with equations today were just stupidity?”

Rodney’s scowl deepened. “I’m sorry?”

“You are making mistakes.” Zelenka’s tone brooked no argument, and the moment or two before he continued were left uncharacteristically silent as Rodney ran a hand through his hair. “Simulations were delayed so Peters could check your work and your behavior is worse than usual. It is possible you have broken Simpson’s assistant; this is entertaining, yes, but unhelpful. You should not be here.”

Rodney slumped a little on his stool, his back letting out a spasm of protest. He’d been spending more and more time in the lab since Katie had gone to her mother’s, but Radek was right; he wasn’t achieving anything.

“I’ve just -” he huffed out an irritable sigh. “I’ve been thinking.”

“It‘s reassuring that this is a change for you,” Radek answered dryly.

“I’ve been thinking about -” he threw Radek a pained glance and the other scientist rolled his eyes, grabbing coats from the hooks behind the door and dumping them on the desk beside Rodney as he pulled up a stool.

“Why can you not make woman friends?” Radek grumbled just loud enough for him to hear, but Rodney dismissed it as unworthy of comment.

“I’ve been thinking about something I want to do. Or, or something I feel I _ought_ to do, maybe, although I’m not sure whether that’s just some sort of attempt at banishing my guilt.” Rodney tapped his chin thoughtfully. “No, I think I want to do it, and banishing guilt would probably involve Katie in some way so I don’t imagine it’s a case of ‘ought’, which does raise the question of whether or not I should be considering it at all, just for the sake of my knowing. It’s an insane enough idea that I don’t know why I’m even discussing it with you and I really ought to be -”

Radek caught him by the back of the shirt before he’d got far, reeling him determinedly back in and glaring at him until he sat sheepishly down again.

“You are considering insane idea in the pursuit of knowledge? And you are perhaps hoping I will talk you out of it?”

“I - er -” Rodney shrugged, his mouth more lopsided than usual. “Yes?”

“You are an idiot.”

“Well thank you.” Rodney stood again, the stool screeching backwards across the floor as he gestured angrily. “I really cannot tell you how helpful you’ve been.”

“Rodney -”

“No, really. I don’t even have the words to describe the monumental unhelpfulness of that comment. I’m not sure the numbers needed to calculate it even _exist_. Are you angling for a transfer to Dr. Kavanagh’s team, is that what this is?” He folded his arms across his chest, because there was really only so far that angry flailing could take you and he was starting to feel faintly ridiculous. Radek’s expression - some strange cross between exasperated and indulgent that was becoming more and more familiar - wasn’t particularly helpful. Radek shook his head, smile reluctant but real.

“Insane ideas are the way that you _work_. I should be surprised that you are crazy?”

“What the hell does that even -”

“No.” Radek sliced his hand through the air in front of him. “Now is the time for you to listen. You are not yourself, you are not pleasant,” he raised an eyebrow at Rodney’s snort, but carried on when nothing more was forthcoming, “you are not _happy_. You are no use to me like this. If you are to pursue this idea, if you ask - the universe will not explode?”

Rodney glared at him.

“Of course it won’t -”

“Then why are you hesitating? You are better off there than here, and answers will mean the universe makes a little more sense, perhaps.”

“I - yes. I suppose so.”

“Good.” Radek threw his coat at him, perhaps a little more forcefully than was strictly necessary. “Don’t come back until you are back to normal.” He tilted his head to one side, looking thoughtful. “Or nicer. You could be nicer.”

“Oh yes, very funny.” Rodney pulled on his coat and zipped it up, focusing on his fingers, the floor, anything but Zelenka as he continued. “And Radek? Thank you.”

The other scientist snorted.

“Thank me by never doing this again. We will pretend we are men and have no emotions.”

“Yes yes,” and Rodney waved him away with a grin, “I’m perfectly capable. Now go home.”

“Rodney -”

“I will in a minute, I promise.” His grin widened slightly, and his stomach twisted in a way that wasn’t entirely unpleasant as he sat back down at his laptop. “I have a plane ticket to buy.”

===

John still found himself halfway through dialing Rodney’s number, sometimes. It was like a reflex action, almost, something that sneaked up on him from the lizard parts of his brain without consulting the bits which knew exactly how fucked up this could get if he let his guard down. But his hand was shaking, this time, as he pressed the last digit, held the phone up to his ear.

His eyes were still frantically scanning the New York crowd, the ring tone pulsing through his head nowhere near fast enough to match the racing of his heart as he checked out faces, clothes - fuck, what color had he even…?

“Jesus _Christ_ , Rodney, would you pick up the goddamn phone?”

A woman walking past him flinched away, but he couldn’t spare her enough attention to care, his breath escaping him in a shuddering rush that drew misty shapes in the air as there was a click at the other end of the line.

“Yes, what?”

“Rodney, I -”

But the phone message continued over him, words cutting off as his throat tightened around them.

“- right now, since some of us have far more important things to do than spew nonsense down the idiot tube. Yes, alright, that’s the television, but I can feel brain cells getting sucked out as I say this so it’s appropriate at least. If you have the time to leave a message then it’s not important enough to listen to.”

The phone beeped, anyway, and somewhere entirely too fucking far away a tape machine rolled, caught his threadbare reply and held it.

“I need you, buddy.”

That was it, that was all. That was pretty much everything that needed to be said.

===

To be honest, in Athosian, Real Boy had looked pretty much like regular old Halling, but John hadn’t commented on it at the time. Halling had been too busy with his arms wrapped around Jinto, a smile pressed into his hair, and John had been distracted by the fact that Teyla had virtually hauled him down by the ears, her smile bright enough to dazzle him as she pressed their foreheads together.

“John Sheppard,” she’d said, voice just as warm and familiar and missed as her smile, “it has been many days.”

“Too many,” he’d answered honestly, sliding his hands from her shoulders to wrap around her, pull her into a hug that she’d returned tightly for a moment or two before pulling away, swatting him on the arm and making him laugh.

“You have survived each other, I see,” and her voice had been as amused at the fact as he was - never would have taken himself for any kind of a caretaker, but it wasn’t as though that’d been the only thing he’d learned about himself, lately.

“We bonded,” he’d told her, which only proved that he was a glutton for punishment, and had apparently signed him up for babysitting duty for pretty much the rest of his natural born life, if Jinto had anything to do with it.

Teyla didn’t have cable.

===

Ferris wheels didn’t have anything on the Empire State Building, which had been kind of the point, the traditional tourist-type move. Right now it just meant that John was going slowly out of his damn mind as the elevator seemed to take forever on the way down. Four steps from the door to the corner, turn, five paces, turn, every now and again a pause thrown in for variety, thrown in for the other people in the elevator who were looking at him like he was bloodstained and frantic.

He leaned against the wall as he counted down from twenty, fingers tapping against his thigh before straying unconsciously to his jacket pocket, his cell phone. The ridiculous part was that there was nothing Rodney could do anyway, _less_ than nothing. It wasn’t as though the guy was good in a crisis situation, wasn’t as though there was advice he wasn’t already following. Just -

Just John really needed to hear his voice, right now.

And wasn’t that - wasn’t that what all of this had been building up to, when it came down to it? Telling Teyla, letting her convince him into accepting the tickets - even earlier than that. Sleepless nights, half-dialed numbers, the way his whole life had threatened to fall apart around him over someone he’d never even met.

And he didn’t have the time to think about this right now, he _didn’t_ , but he was pretty sure he’d be making a phone call as soon as this stupid mess was sorted out. And it would be.

Two, the numbers over the door said finally, one.

===

Teyla had stayed silent when he’d finally stopped speaking, looking down at plane tickets that she’d held in slender fingers.

“It was a kind gesture,” she’d said finally. “Given with little knowledge of human nature, perhaps, and easily misinterpreted -”

“That’s Rodney,” John had said wryly, from his comfortable huddle on the couch.

“- but it was kind,” she’d finished. “It would appear that he wants you to be happy.”

“Hey,” John had answered, a protesting note in his voice, “ _I_ want me to be happy.”

Teyla’s face, when she’d looked at him, had had him rubbing the back of his neck and staring intently at the floor.

“And it is about time.”

“So you think I should take them?” he’d asked, without looking at her.

“There is no point in wasting them. You should go, John, and you should enjoy yourself, and you should reflect on all of this.” She’d laughed softly at the expression he couldn’t quite hide - he was probably just lucky she hadn’t said ‘meditate’ - and the laugh was still dancing around the edges of her voice when she’d continued. “And I think I am right in saying you will not be taking Teer.”

“But I still have that spare ticket,” he’d said, smiling hopefully up at her.

“And I know who would be honored to take it,” she’d answered, and his smile had broadened until she’d finished, “since you have _bonded_.”

===

Which was how he’d ended up here, the first person out of the elevator, almost falling down at the relief of seeing Jinto - who had promised he’d stick to John, who’d promised not to get lost in the damned crowds, who’d promised not to give John a goddamned _heart attack_ \- involved in deep discussion with a stocky, dark-haired guy who looked up as the people came flooding out of the elevator, all of them giving John a wide berth.

And - _Jesus_ , but his eyes were blue.

“John!” Jinto ran up to him and he crouched down, grateful for the distraction as his heart knocked painfully against his ribcage.

“You okay?” Essentials out of the way first, asking almost on autopilot since he could see the kid was fine, since the kid was already confirming it.

“I am well. And this is -”

But John cut across him, looking up and meeting a hesitant gaze.

“Hey, buddy,” he said softly.

“Hello, John.”

And if he’d thought he’d needed to hear that voice over phone lines, it was nothing compared to - it was a stomach-twisting adrenaline rush, a smile that threatened to break his face in half, enough to make him shift his weight and sit back on his heels just to remind himself that he was still on solid ground.

“So,” he managed, his voice impressively laconic - and _clear_ , considering the fact that his heart was apparently in his mouth - “Empire State Building?”

“I’m told it’s considered traditional,” and Rodney was swinging for sarcastic and missing by a mile, which only made John’s smile even wider.

“What made you think I’d use the tickets?”

Rodney looked down, shifted his weight, and John had to curl his fingers into the faded denim across his thigh to stop from stretching out his hand.

“Apparently,” was the eventual reply, “I’ve turned into a hopeless romantic.”

He couldn’t help it, he laughed, and the corner of Rodney’s mouth curled helplessly upward in response.

“Y’know,” he said, “this would have been a more romantic gesture if you’d actually met me at the top…”

“What?” Rodney spluttered, waving a hand towards the elevator with enough violence to almost bowl over a passing old lady in a painfully ugly sweater. “Go up in one of those things? Besides, I located your missing kid for you. That’s not romance-cliché enough?”

John reached out, finally, and curled his hand around Rodney’s wrist. He braced himself to his feet with a soft grunt that had Rodney’s fingers curling towards his hand, blue eyes meeting his - and he deliberately tightened his grip. Didn’t let go.

“Nah,” he said. “Pretty sure it’ll do.”


	9. Epilogue

Apparently the world smiled on John Sheppard.

Rodney’s life had always been a parade of transportation disappointments, overcrowded trains and missed taxis, but they stood at the edge of the road for only a couple of minutes before a cab trickled out of the endless stream of traffic and pulled up next to them. John climbed in first – the first time he had let go of Rodney’s wrist, which was probably a good thing since his fingers had been tingling strangely ever since John had grabbed hold, and that was his typing hand. Actually _both_ were his typing hands, and he couldn’t quite suppress the small voice in the back of his head that was telling him that it would be worth the loss of fine motor control for the feeling of John’s fingerprints pressed into his skin.

He scrambled into the back seat after Jinto, a bastion of sanity placed neatly between them, and vibrated in place, staring out of the window as his hands tapped restless rhythms on his knees. (It was a good thing John had gone for the wrist – Rodney was reasonably sure he had never been this clammy.)

John’s voice cracked slightly, giving the driver the address.

This is how what they have defies the laws of physics: the taxi ride lasted forever and then was over in a heartbeat, standing on another grey sidewalk a thousand years after he was sure he hadn’t had time to move. (This is how what they have defies Rodney’s powers of articulation.) He looked up at the hotel and had to take a breath and blink for a moment because this couldn’t be further from the circumstances he’d been vaguely picturing when he booked it, too many weeks ago.

“You okay, Rodney?”

Really, phone lines hadn’t done enough to convey the laziness of the drawl. Jinto was already pushing his way through glass doors, and John stepped a little closer (not helping, _not helping_ ) and although he didn’t grab any appendages this time his fingers did brush against Rodney’s for a nanosecond. Rodney caught his breath. Pins and needles again – most probably nerve damage.

“I think you’re bad for my health,” which wasn’t precisely what he’d intended to say but was pretty close to what he’d meant.

“Maybe we should get you somewhere you can lie down,” John said solicitously, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth – oh god, his _mouth_. Rodney had really really been trying not to focus on individual features yet, had been trying to look at John only out of the corner of his eye, but –

“I – you –that sort of line _works_ for you? Seriously?”

John’s tongue darted out to wet his bottom lip as his smile widened. And it wasn’t even lingering, it wasn’t even deliberate, it didn’t even have the good grace to be a cheap move that Rodney could distract himself from with mocking. It was just – shiny. Really, really _shiny_.

“You tell me, McKay.”

Rodney opened his mouth, closed it again, flailed inarticulately and spun on his heel, pushing through glass doors to join Jinto by the elevator. It was probably just about as low as you could go to consider a pre-adolescent boy a fitting bodyguard, but he took care to keep him between them as John finally arrived. He wasn’t entirely sure if it was for John’s benefit or his.

It turned out that the suite – because Rodney wasn’t exactly hurting for money, and he’d wanted to make sure he had somewhere to get some work done without disturbing Katie – was even bigger than it had looked on the website. Rodney headed straight for the window and rested his head against cool glass, trying to shut out the soft muttering from John, the curious glance from Jinto, and what was apparently money changing hands. Then the kid disappeared into the other room, shutting the door firmly behind him, and John came over to stand next to Rodney with his hands tucked into his armpits, maintaining a careful distance.

Rodney tilted his head enough to send John a sidelong look.

“ _He_ gets the bedroom?”

“Figured it would be a better start than you hyperventilating,” John told him dryly.

“I’m not –“ Rodney began, working up to outraged, then deflated slightly when John raised an eyebrow at him. He’d been unprepared for facial acrobatics. “It’s just – it’s a lot. I haven’t quite had the time to think this through.”

“Join the club,” John replied, oddly serious for all of a minute before he fished in his pocket and pulled out his cell, waggling it at Rodney. “I could phone you from the bathroom if it’d make things easier.”

“ – and I thought you were annoying at a _distance_.”

John snorted at that, and something in Rodney’s chest tightened. He wondered what he could do to provoke a full laugh, painfully honking, wondered whether it would be as awful across meters as miles. And then he stopped wondering entirely as John took a quick step forward – uneasy and not quite graceful, as though he’d been pushed – and raised a hand to cup Rodney’s cheek, thumb brushing just at the corner of his mouth before John let it drop again.

“There are compensations,” he said, voice low.

“Oh god,” Rodney said faintly, “oh please, tell me there’s a mini bar in this place.”

John took a step backward again, hands tucking straight back into his armpits. He jerked his head towards the corner of the room, his expression ironic and shuttered.

“Should I be offended?”

===

John clamped his arms down harder on his hands as Rodney stared at him for a second, blue eyes wide and defenceless. His funny lopsided mouth was even more crooked, pulled down at one corner, and he’d tried the touching thing already and even though it hadn’t worked it was kind of impossible to resist trying it again. He turned away instead, headed for the alcohol.

“Get me something, would you?”

A rustling thump was Rodney sitting himself heavily on the couch, on top of the blanket John had been using the last couple of nights. John turned his head to look at him, hand closing around miniature bottles, and saw that Rodney was actually looking a little pale, fingers twitching together furiously.

“Brandy?” he asked, because he couldn’t resist teasing, “you look like you’re going to faint.”

“I’m not going to faint,” Rodney snapped, annoyed and familiar. “If anything I’d pass out. From – from manly overexertion.”

John couldn’t help a laugh, and Rodney’s mouth twitched upward in response.   
“You didn’t even get up to the top of the Empire State Building, McKay.”

“I know,” Rodney said, strangely earnest as a slow flush climbed his cheeks. “I just – I feel like my heart’s beating a hundred miles an hour.”

“Yeah,” said John softly, and crossed the room to sit on the couch beside him, closer than he could have, but not quite touching. When Rodney’s fingers brushed against his, curling around cool glass –

Yeah.

“I shouldn’t be this nervous,” Rodney burst out, twisting the cap off his drink in one sharp movement, “it’s ridiculous that I’m this nervous but it’s not as if I’ve ever really done this before.”

John was kind of grateful to Rodney for saying it first, more grateful still that he was distracting himself so John could inch a little further along the couch until their knees were just shy of touching and he could feel the heat from Rodney’s body radiating across the space between them.

Rodney threw back his drink, made a face, kept talking with barely a pause.

“I don’t suppose _anyone’s_ done this before, not like this. It’s like some kind of ridiculous overblown movie, something embarrassing and twee except one of us would have to be the girl and I don’t think I have the hips for it. And much as I hate to be a cliché here,” Rodney fumbled for his hand, his skin cool and clammy, John’s fingers bent awkwardly between his, “I want to kiss you. Can I kiss you?”

Instead of trying to control his voice long enough to talk John just leaned forward, closed the last few inches of space between them.

The thing was – the thing was, after so long, after such a build up, it was pretty much guaranteed to be a disappointment. Anything would have been; the single best kiss in the world couldn’t live up to the damned dreams that had been torturing him, and it definitely wasn’t that. John’s head was bent at an uncomfortable angle, and Rodney’s lips were thin and the skin around them abrasive, and somehow – even though he’d been doing this for more years than he wanted to count – noses were a new and impossible complication. Rodney’s hand was squeezing his almost painfully, and John needed to shift position before he wound up with a permanent awkward twist in his back.

Only... the thing was, it was _Rodney_. And when he pulled back and said John’s name, quiet and breathless and almost _awed_ , there was nothing else John could do but pull him back in again.

And it was like the familiar sound of Rodney’s voice had reminded him how there were supposed to fit together, across miles and phone lines, across the distance between John’s hand and Rodney’s jaw. The angle was better, and Rodney was smiling against his mouth, and when a tongue slid quickly across his lower lip John groaned, deep in his throat.

Rodney smiled again, pulled away far enough to murmur “ _he_ gets the bedroom?” against the skin of John’s cheek, and John couldn’t hold in his laugh, not for anything.

“You’re wanting some manly overexertion, McKay?”

Could be that Rodney was just kissing him to silence the laughter he’d spent so damn long criticising from afar.

John was okay with that, so long as he kept right on doing it.


End file.
